- villain
- villain, scoundrel, blackguard, knave, rascal, rogue, scamp, rapscallion, miscreant can all denote a low, mean, and reprehensible person utterly lacking in principles.Villain describes one utterly given to crime, evil, and baseness{
are not made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they committed it— Ruskin
}Scoundrel may suggest blended worthlessness, meanness, and unscrupulousness{a crew of pirates . . . will elect a boatswain to order them about and a captain to lead them and navigate the ship, though the one may be the most insufferable bully and the other the most tyrannical scoundrel on board— Shaw
}Blackguard may imply inveterate depravity; sometimes it is used with a suggestion of angry contempt as the antithesis of gentleman{you must employ either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded by gentlemen, to do butcher's work with efficiency and dispatch— Kipling
}Knave may suggest sly trickery and deceit{cheating knaves gathered at the taverns
}{more fool than knave
}Rascal may suggest base dishonesty{your true rascal is today your only true citizen of the world. He plunders all nations without pride in one or prejudice against another— Linklater
}Rogue often suggests the blended roughness and wiliness of a vagabond{sturdy rogues taking to the roads as high-waymen
}but both rascal and rogue are freely used with greatly weakened force and then imply no more than a more or less pleasing mischievousness{tell me about . . . the dear little rogues— Whitman
}{the Yankee . . . was already established as a comic rascal— Bergen Evans
}Scamp may describe one given to artful cheating, clever robbery, or interesting escapades{a scamp who had pinched pennies out of the teacups of the poor by various shenanigans, who was distributing his largess to divert attention from his rascality— White
}and it, too, is often used with weakened force, then suggesting impish and often childish trickery{the most audacious scamp in all the animal kingdom is Bugs Bunny— My Baby Magazine
}Rapscallion may refer to an ill-dressed rogue or rascal rarely successful{the rapscallions of the river, the Black Gangs— Le Sueur
}Miscreant typically refers to a singularly conscienceless villain{a sordid glamour about imprisonment which makes the young miscreant feel important; he has the inverted satisfaction of being treated like a grown-up gangster— Times Lit. Sup.
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
