wicked [ME] This comes from Old English wicca ‘*witch’. Wicked is one of those words, like *bad, which has completely reversed its meaning in the slang sense ‘excellent, very good’, first used in the 1920s. No peace for the wicked [LME] is a biblical allusion, to the Book of Isaiah: ‘There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.’ See also thumb.