perverse
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /pɚˈvɝs/
ipa: /pəˈvɜːs/
rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)s
Forms: form: more perverse
form: perverser
form: most perverse
form: perversest
Etymology: From Middle English perverse, pervers, from Old French pervers, from Latin perversum (“thoroughly turned”), past participle of pervertere, from per- (“thoroughly”) + vertere (“to turn”).
Senses: examples: text: Any man who succeeds in diverting the public taste, or in turning back a perverse stream which will flow in the direction of the ditch, leaves a mark, as it were, and cannot be overlooked by posterity.
ref: 1872, The Gentleman's Magazine - Volume 232, page 367:
text: But in the same sense are modern Nietzsche's screams against the perverse (diverted) diffusion of these elemental pleas to reason for “reasons,” for the reasons—and place—of our fall in nonsense.
ref: 2008, Harrison Mujica-Jenkins, The Ninth Hour, page 221221:
text: The diverted or perverse way is also not an easy path to walk. It is rightly called “crooked” and “twisting.”
ref: 2013, Robert Saucy, Minding the Heart: The Way of Spiritual Transformation:
glosses: Turned aside while against something, splitting off from a thing.
examples: text: Looking at Barbara one would have considerable difficulty detecting a perverse side to her nature. Her expression was demure, shy, and apprehensive. But she recognized the demonic aspect of her personality and admitted it.
 I felt most alive when I felt most perverse. At college, sleeping with boys had a perverse quality. I slept with a boy friend of one of my girl friends, and I was proud of it. I bragged about it because I had done something perverse. Another time, I slept with a man, fat and ugly, who paid me for it. I was very proud. I felt I had the ability to do something different.
ref: 1967, Alexander Lowen, The Betrayal of the Body, U.S.A.: Macmillan Publishing Company, published 1969, page 13:
glosses: Morally wrong or evil; wicked; perverted.
glosses: Obstinately in the wrong; stubborn; intractable.
examples: text: [The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across.[…]Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, and that in several cases these bacteria were dividing and thus, by the perverse arithmetic of biological terminology, multiplying.
ref: 2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:
text: Where this perverse sign flip occurs depends on the values of other parameters […].
ref: 2023, Eric Sims, Jing Cynthia Wu, and Ji Zhang, The Four-Equation New Keynesian Model, The Review of Economics and Statistics 105(4), pp. 931--947
glosses: Wayward; vexing; contrary.
topics: law
glosses: Ignoring the evidence or the judge's opinions.
raw_tags: of a verdict
Synonyms: word: contrary
word: cross
word: froward
word: intractable
word: petulant
word: stubborn
word: ungovernable
word: untoward
word: vexatious
word: vexing
word: wayward
Hypernyms: word: obstinate
word: quarrelsome
Derived terms: perverb
perverse incentive
perversely
perverseness
perversity
perversive
polymorphous-perverse
polymorph-perverse
unperverse
Related terms: word: bite off one's nose to spite one's face