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.
2020		‘Secret Barrister’ Fake Law 161: [A]ll justice requires is to draw a dividing line between goodies and baddies.

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.
1981		P. Radley Jack Rivers & Me 33: [N]othing in the world can hurt us. Not Indians or Baddies or those Spacemen.
1989		Beano Comic Library No. 182 40: While the goodies are away, the baddies will play.
1995		P. Vautin Turn It Up! 127: What really gets to me in these goodies versus baddies movies is just how useless the baddies are.
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’.