Other forms: villains
A villain is the evil figure the hero must defeat. The villain of the piece, a cartoon villain, a convincing villain.
A good one believes they are right, which is the standard advice to writers and the reason flat villains fail. The word's history is a class insult: a villein was a peasant bound to an estate, and the meaning slid from farm worker to scoundrel over a few centuries.
1nounvillainThe evil figure the hero must defeat.
“The actor loves playing the villain, with his black cape and evil laugh.”
villain is a character type.
Also accepted in games: baddie
Old French vilein comes from Latin villanus, a farm worker bound to a villa. Village and villa come from the same estate.
Proto-Indo-European
*weyḱ-
Latin
vīllānus
Old French
vilein
Middle English
vilein
English, today
villain
Probably from Middle English vilein, from Old French vilein (modern French vilain), in turn from Latin vīllānus, meaning serf or peasant, someone who is bound to the soil of a Latin vīlla, which is to say, worked on the equivalent of a plantation in late Antiquity, in Italy or Gaul. a doublet of villein. Compare typologically pagan (see more).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA