villain of the piece, the

The person to blame for what is bad or wrong, as in I'm afraid the caterer is the villain of the piece-the food wasn't ready for hours. The piece in this term alludes to a play in which the villain is the character whose evildoing is important to the plot. [Mid-1800s]

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
Anna	AN-a (English), AHN-nah (Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish), AH-nah (German, Russian), AN-nah (Danish)	English, Italian, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Greek, Hung
ÁRon	AH-ron	Hungarian
Timaeus	tie-MEE-əs (English)	Ancient Greek (Latinized), Biblical Latin, Biblical
Gioia	JO-yah	Italian
AnĐElo	-	Croatian
Zyanya	-	Native American, Zapotec