Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post

The whole thing is even funnier when you know that villain means peasant, so Lex Luthor the billionaire is super poor.
That's certainly the root of the word, someone who is tied to a villa, but it hasn't meant that in...hundreds if not more...years. It shifted in term however to mean someone who was less than knightly, which meant thieving and rape and all that nasty stuff. It's easy to see how the term evolved with that.