anti-villain

noun

Etymology

From anti- + villain.

  1. derived from vīlla
  2. derived from vīllānus
  3. derived from vilein
  4. inherited from vilein
  5. prefixed as anti-villain — “anti + villain

Definitions

  1. An antagonist who has or may have noble or honorable aims, but pursues them destructively.

    • As much the anti-hero initially as Thorpe is anti-villain, Tinley's function in the first volume is to expose to Catherine various modes of triviality and affectation.
    • The rise of the anti-hero as the protagonist of much of modern fiction was accompanied by the rise of what one might call the “anti-villain,” ironically understood as more interesting than his heroic counterpart.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for anti-villain. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA