wicked

From Middle English wicked, wikked, an alteration of Middle English wicke, wikke (“morally perverse, evil, wicked”). Of uncertain origin. Possibly from an adjectival use of Old English wiċċa (“wizard, sorcerer”), from Proto-West Germanic *wikkō (“necromancer, sorcerer”), though the phonology makes this theory difficult to explain. Alternatively, perhaps related to English wicker, Old Norse víkja (“to bend to, yield, turn, move”), Swedish vika (“to bend, fold, give way to”), English weak.

The "excellent, awesome" sense is an ameliorative semantic shift from the original sense of "evil, mischievous". Compare similar semantic development in terrific and sick.

• enPR: wĭkʹĭd, IPA^(key): /ˈwɪkɪd/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪkɪd

wicked (comparative wickeder or more wicked, superlative wickedest or most wicked)

1. Evil or mischievous by nature; morally reprehensible.

   Synonyms: evil, immoral, malevolent, malicious, nefarious, twisted, villainous; see also Thesaurus:evil

   Genuine cowards follow wicked people and cannot reliably sustain any virtue.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs 28:1:

     The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bolde as a lyon.

   • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 101:

     “Yes,” replied she; “and the saddest part of it all is that she is not marrying the man she loves. Oh, it is terrible. Marrying from a sense of duty! I think it is perfectly wicked, and I told her so.”

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 6, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

     ‘ […] I remember a lady coming to inspect St. Mary's Home where I was brought up and seeing us all in our lovely Elizabethan uniforms we were so proud of, and bursting into tears all over us because “it was wicked to dress us like charity children”. […]’.

   • 1989, Chris Isaak, “Wicked Game”, in Heart Shaped World:

     What a wicked game to play, to make me feel this way / What a wicked thing to do, to let me dream of you / What a wicked thing to say, you never felt this way

2. Harsh; severe.

   wicked wind

3. (slang) Excellent; awesome; masterful.

   Synonyms: awesome, bad, cool, dope, excellent, far out, groovy, hot, rad; see also Thesaurus:excellent

   That was a wicked guitar solo, bro!

wicked (not comparable)

1. (slang, especially southern New England, British) To a superlative extent, very, extremely

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:very

   • I didn't really wanna go see On Golden Pond with the fam, but my mom made me go, and I must say that in retrospect it was a wicked expressive film, with a lot of significant meaning.
   • The band we went to see the other night was pissah, and they were wicked loud!
   • 2025, Love On the Spectrum, season 3, episode 3, James and Sonia (actors):

     James: It looks like you're wearing earrings also. Those are really something. Those aren't too heavy, are they? / Sonia: No, they're actually, like, wicked light.

It would appear that wicked was originally used in and around Boston, MA, as the intensifying adverb in adjectival phrases qualifying especially (though by no means exclusively) positive adjectives, that is, adjectives describing the goodness and desirability of things or situations; it was never used adverbially in the qualification of verbs. Over time, phrases like "wicked good", "wicked awesome", and "wicked strong", and the highly idiomatic "wicked pissah" were often shortened by New Englanders (for whom brevity in speech may be viewed as a cultural imperative) to simply "wicked" by means of phrasal clipping. In this way, adverbial "wicked" gained an adjectival sense in its own right meaning "great"/"superlative". What is or was special to Boston and the Northeast is usage as an adverb (in adjectival phrases) and as an adjective, not the usage thereof only as an adverb. It should be noted that the Merriam-Webster and American Heritage dictionaries no longer label the adverbial usage, in qualifying/intensifying adjectives, a regionalism.

Use of "wicked" as an adjective (in the sense of "extreme, awesome") rather than an intensifying adverb ("extremely, very") is sometimes considered an error when it is used to suggest a Boston or Northeast dialect. In fact, this is not necessarily true in the case of Bostonians born in the 1960s and 70s (and perhaps later) or in other New England dialects.^[1][2] "That's a wicked car" is perhaps used mostly by older Bostonians, but "that car's wicked" and especially "(that's) wicked!" (in the sense of "fantastic, awesome, great") are common in Boston.

See wick.

• enPR: wĭkt, IPA^(key): /wɪkt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪkt

wicked

1. simple past and past participle of wick

wicked (not comparable)

1. Having a wick.

   a two-wicked lamp

   • 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard:

     Up went Moggy, with her thick-wicked kitchen candle, to seek repose; […]

• multiwicked

See wick.

• IPA^(key): /ˈwɪkɪd/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪkɪd

wicked

1. (UK, dialect, obsolete) Active; brisk.
2. (British, dialect, chiefly Yorkshire) Infested with maggots.
3. Alternative form of wick, as applying to inanimate objects only.

• “wicked”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• Dewick

wicked

1. alternative form of wikked

From Middle English wikked.

• IPA^(key): /ˈwɪkəd/

wicked

1. wicked
   • 1867, “CASTEALE CUDDE'S LAMENTATION”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 4, page 104:

     Zimaan Haay is a wicked man,

     Simon Hay is a wicked man,

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 104