badass

Pluralbadasses

1. 1
   very cooladjectiveslangUS

   Having an appearance, attitude, or behavior that is extreme in a way people admire.

   The movie's opening chase scene was completely badass.

   He rode in on a badass motorcycle with flames painted on the tank.

   Similarcool, awesome, wicked, sick

   Oppositelame, uncool

   Note

   Three spellings circulate for the admiring adjective: badass, bad-ass and bad ass. Unlike the hostile adjective, it sits comfortably after a verb (that guy looks badass; the coat is completely badass), and it praises things as readily as people. Where the slang would jar, cool or awesome does the same work without the edge.

2. 2
   admired personnounslangUScountable

   A person who impresses others with courage, skill, daring, audacity, or toughness.

   Fans adored the goalie, a fearless badass who played the final with a broken nose.

   The podcast celebrates history's forgotten badasses, from daring spies to record-breaking pilots.

   Similarhero, legend

   Note

   Only context separates this admiring noun from the mean-troublemaker meaning. Praise is what it carries when Special Forces soldiers or the warrior queen Lakshmibai are called badasses, and Jack Nicholson was already using it of himself in 1973. Its scornful offshoot is the wannabe badass: someone posing at a toughness he cannot back up.

3. 3
   nounslangUScountable

   A belligerent or mean person, or one whose appearance, attitude, or behavior is unpleasantly extreme.

   The sheriff knew every badass in the county by name and by temper.

   A couple of badasses at the end of the bar were looking for someone to pick a fight with.

   Similartough, thug, bruiser, bully

   Note

   Here the word is a warning: a real badass is someone you do not mess with, whether a hardened prison inmate or a hothead nobody wants to cross. It is American slang, built from bad and ass in its sense of "one's self or person," and some listeners hear the ass as vulgar, so keep it to casual talk among people who will not mind.

4. 4
   adjectiveslangUS

   Hostile, aggressive, and given to causing trouble.

   The bouncer kept an eye on two badass bikers who had already smashed a glass.

   The substitute dreaded third period, when a badass crowd of seniors took over the back row and refused to sit down.

   Similartough, aggressive, rowdy, hostile

   Oppositemeek, gentle

   Note

   In its hostile meaning the adjective usually stands before a word for people, as in badass kids, badass people or a badass thug, rather than after a verb such as be. It often piles onto other words for menace, as in really bad, badass people, where it adds a note of trouble that plain bad lacks.

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