- 1邪惡的、惡毒的、反派般的
Villainous means evil in the way a story villain is evil — cruel, scheming, and enjoying it a little. It is the adjective belonging to villain. Because it points back to the bad guy in stories, it has a theatrical flavour: a villainous laugh, a villainous plot, a villainous grin. Writers reach for it in novels, film reviews and history writing far more often than people use it in speech. That theatrical flavour also makes it usable half-jokingly — you can call your friend's plan to steal the last dumpling villainous and nobody thinks you mean it. For real, serious evil in everyday English, people say cruel, evil, or wicked. One old sense you may meet in older books: villainous also used to mean simply 'very bad in quality' — villainous weather, villainous food.
組成villain + -ous ('full of, having the quality of'). It came through Middle English vileinous from Old French vileneus. Deeper down, a villain originally just meant a farm worker tied to a great house — the word slid from 'low-born' to 'wicked' because of who was doing the naming.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
villainousadj/ˈvɪlənəs/
- 1
Of, relating to, or appropriate to a villain.
- 2
Wicked, offensive, or reprehensible in nature or behaviour; nefarious.
- Tuc[ca]. […] Can thy Author doe it impudently enough? / Hiſt[rio]. O, I warrant you, Captaine: and ſpitefully inough too; he ha's one of the moſt ouerflowing villanous wits, in Rome. He will ſlander any man that breathes; If he diſguſt him. / Tucca. I'le know the poor, egregious, nitty Raſcall; and he haue ſuch commendable Qualities, I'le cheriſh him: […]
- Bah! to this toilet for the villainous boredom of church.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。