Word of the Day Archive
Friday December 3, 1999
miscreant \MIS-kree-uhnt\ , adjective:
1. Disbelieving; heretical.
2. Depraved; behaving badly.
noun:
1. A disbeliever; a heretic.
2. A scoundrel; an evildoer; a villain.
Unlike miscreant me, Susan was a good girl who thought she heard the call of the wild and decided to try on being bad like a jean jacket.
-- Jonathan Carroll, The Wooden Sea
He belongs to a horrible gang of miscreants, sworn against all order and peace.
-- Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes
No one would think to look for him in a fourth-floor jail cell atop this small-town county courthouse, a face unrecognizable among the town drunks and petty thieves and other local miscreants.
-- Richard A. Serrano, One of Ours
Miscreant is from Middle French mescreant, present participle of mescroire, "to disbelieve," from mes-, "wrongly, not" + croire, "to believe," from Latin credere.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for miscreant
