villainy

villainies

Villainy is a characteristic of being evil or wicked. A movie character's villainy is what makes him the bad guy, the one the audience roots against.

You might be surprised to learn of your next door neighbor's villainy — if, say, he turned out to be a bank robber. In comic books, superheroes fight against villainy, battling the villains. Villainy, in fact, comes from villain, rooted in the Medieval Latin villanus, "farmhand." A villain was once a "peasant," then a "boor" or "clown," and finally a "scoundrel."