wicked
Usage
What are other ways to say wicked?
Wicked implies willful and determined doing of what is very wrong: a wicked plan. Evil applies to that which violates or leads to the violation of moral law: evil practices. Ill now appears mainly in certain fixed expressions, with a milder implication than that in evil: ill will; ill-natured. Bad is the broadest and simplest term: a bad man; bad habits.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
She remembers being mesmerized by the story’s wicked witch.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
"I really rate Andy Burnham for what he's done with Manchester. I think he's wicked," said McCulloch, 22.
From Barron's ● Jul. 20, 2026
This included their attempts at British accents as they declared the evening to be "absolutely wicked".
From BBC ● Jul. 19, 2026
Though Neill had more than a lifetime’s experience playing characters who were solely benevolent or entirely wicked, he was remarkably adept at navigating the journey back and forth between these two polarities.
From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2026
“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
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So here are deviled eggs, made wickeder by breading and deep-frying the whites, crunchy veneer giving way to wobble.
From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2017
Think of this book as a typical English-village mystery with a wickeder sting.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 7, 2010
That is Day-Lewis' goal and gift: to be so true to his characters that they need never be sentimentalized, made to seem finer, grander, wickeder or more appealing.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Society—if there is such a thing—isn't any wickeder than anybody else.
From What Will People Say? A novel by Hughes, Rupert
I have grown a little paler, a little thinner, and a great deal wickeder, and that is all.
From The Diamond Coterie by Lynch, Lawrence L.
Efforts to make it appear that one of the world’s wickedest men would be in thrall to this milky, recessive nonentity are laughable.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026
America has a problem,” the title of the bottom-bumping Miami bass jam that doubles as the wickedest joke on the “Renaissance” album.
From New York Times ● Dec. 1, 2023
Both characters are deeply, deeply decent people with an instinct towards caretaking and compassion, with an underlying, usually unspoken assumption that, if they’re kind enough, even the wickedest of foes will be disarmed.
From Slate ● Sep. 4, 2021
But a journalist who visited the area during construction had a different name for it: “the wickedest city in America.”
From Washington Post ● Aug. 5, 2021
Miss Throckmorton used to tell us that people who carve things on trees are the wickedest sorts of vandals 'cause they're not only making graffiti, they're hurting living beings too.
From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell
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Vocabulary lists containing wicked
Oh, No! Synonyms for "Bad"
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Macbeth's "Is this a dagger..." soliloquy
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"Frankenstein" and "How Frankenstein Began"
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