anti-heron.
One who is the opposite or reverse of a hero; esp. a chief character in a poem, play, or story who is totally unlike a conventional hero.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > goodness and badness > badness or evil > evil person > [noun] > hero
anti-hero1714
society > morality > moral evil > evil nature or character > [noun] > person of bad character > reverse of hero
anti-hero1714
society > leisure > the arts > literature > prose > narrative or story > fiction > [noun] > creation or description of characters > principal character > types of
saga-man1823
anti-hero1897
Bildungs-hero1962
1714 R. Steele Lover (1720) 13 Every Anti-Heroe in Great Britain.
1897 W. P. Ker Epic & Romance iv. 346 The ineffectual sorrows and good intentions of the anti-hero Fromont.
1907 F. W. Chandler Lit. Roguery I. ii. 68 A work of the Eulenspiegel type..its anti-heroes remain less roguish than Till.
1958 Listener 14 Aug. 248/3 Anti-heroes and unpleasant young men are now so morbidly the fashion.
1959 Sunday Times 27 Dec. 6/4 It was the decade of..the new, shambling, oafish anti-heroes, flotsam of the Welfare State—Lucky Jim and his first cousin Joe Lampton.
Derivatives
anti-heˈroic adj.
ΚΠ
1876 J. E. Hopkins Rose Turquand I. i. 27 A lame and impotent conclusion..and altogether Anti-heroic.
1959 Times Lit. Suppl. 20 Nov. 670/4 Ulysses was and remains the first great masterpiece of anti-heroic literature.
ˈanti-ˌheroine n.
ΚΠ
1907 F. W. Chandler Lit. Roguery I. iv. 148 Other women figured as anti-heroines in less literary tracts.
1962 Times 26 Jan. 16/5 Miss Wendy Baldwin presented a drab, vulgar anti-heroine.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1972; most recently modified version published online November 2010).
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n.1714