Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Aus.) an immoral person.

1901

Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Aug. 14/3: [cartoon caption: two boys staring at a poster of a scantily clad young woman] The Connoisseurs. / ‘By crikey, Billie, she ain’t a baddy, is she?’.

2. an unpleasant person; spec. a criminal.

1939		W. Winchell On Broadway 17 Sept. [synd. col.] Wasn’t that exciting how Detectives Johnny Broderick and Freddy Stepat caught up with those baddies in the Park Central lobby.
1960		Mad mag. June 48: Some old bug-eyed Daddy who, because he was a baddy, / Sang that same note.
1975		‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell and the Three-card Trick (1977) 57: How anybody couldn’t spot them for baddies beats me.
1983		J. Byrell (con. 1959) Up the Cross 92: The first baddie copped a running short left.
1984		A. Sayle Train to Hell 107: Slobbo had been relatively nice, so I thought I’d be the baddy.
1989		Beano Comic Library No. 176 50: Just look at those suspicious characters. Baddies! All of them!
1997		J. Birmingham Tasmanian Babes Fiasco (1998) 202: Assassinated because they were judges. Baddies in Portugal shot them.
2000		N. Griffiths Grits 59: Come an visit an see the biggest concentreytion-a junkies an baddies an nutters at yew’ve ever fuckin seen, mun.
2013		K. Sampson Killing Pool 56: It makes life easy for the baddies, yes — but it can work very nicely for the fellas in white too.
2017		T. Spicer Good Girl Stripped Bare 24: Why am I being punished? The manager’s the baddie in this morality tale.

3. in film or TV melodramas, the stereotyped villain who must, and will, be vanquished.

1937		H. Heffernan cited in AS XIII:2 (1938) 107/1: One of the screen’s most consistent baddies, Bruce Cabot.
1937		Sydney Morn. Herald 15 Mar. 4/2: ‘The savages down there [...] Oh! They’re baddies all right.
1946		N.Y. Herald Trib. Mag. 20 Oct. 27/2: The toughest problem of the serial writer is to dream up new and ingenious perils for the ‘baddies’ to inflict on the ‘goodies’.
1951		N.Y. Sun. News 30 Sept. 19: If you booed today’s stage baddie [W&F].
1960		J. Boswell Ernie and the Rest of Us 15: Two ‘baddies’ from one of our secret-reading ‘Deadwood Dick’ stories.
1979		J. Morrow Confessions of Proinsias O’Toole 40: Living up to that life-philosophy succinctly outlined by baddie Lee Marvin to goodie John Wayne in The Comancheros.
1989		Beano Comic Library No. 182 40: While the goodies are away, the baddies will play.
1999		Indep. Rev. 10 Aug. 5: Do battle against the baddies of the Old West.
2000		T. Blacker Kill Your Darlings 253: Shit, man, you talk like he was some sort of joke baddie from an Agatha Christie film.
2005		Guardian 6 Dec. 25: Hollywood actor renowned as a baddie on and off the screen.

4. in attrib. use of sense 3.

2010

N. Bradley ‘Blind Old Kate’ 🌐 The extras, wearing regulation black baddie hats, galloped onto the scene.

5. (US campus) a difficult course.

1967–8

Baker et al. CUSS.

6. (Aus.) a disappointment.

1986

R.G. Barrett Godson 184: ‘That was a ball-tearer you blokes put on last night.’ ‘You like that did you, Ronald?’ asked Peregrine. ‘It wasn’t a baddy’.