villain

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a wicked person, especially the chief evildoer in a story

   The villain of the play was hissed at by the audience.

Simplified etymology

Villain came through French from a word for a feudal tenant wholly subject to a manor, now usually spelled villein. It ultimately derives from Latin villa, “country house, estate, or farm,” also the source of villa and village. The term became an insult for a supposedly low-born rustic, then developed the sense “criminal”; its use for an evil fictional character dates from the 1820s.

From Old French 'vilain' ('peasant, farmhand, churl'), from Late Latin 'villanus' ('farmhand'), from Latin 'villa' ('country house, farm'). The moral sense ('scoundrel') arose from class contempt for the rustic.

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