Adjective: perverse
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | perverser |
| Superlative | perversest |
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more perverse |
| Superlative | most perverse |
Sample Sentences
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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. [1872, The Gentleman's Magazine - Volume 232, page 367:]
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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. [2008, Harrison Mujica-Jenkins, The Ninth Hour, page 221221:]
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The diverted or perverse way is also not an easy path to walk. It is rightly called “crooked” and “twisting.” [2013, Robert Saucy, Minding the Heart: The Way of Spiritual Transformation:]
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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.
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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. [1967, Alexander Lowen, The Betrayal of the Body, U.S.A.: Macmillan Publishing Company, published 1969, page 13:]
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[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. [2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:]
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Where this perverse sign flip occurs depends on the values of other parameters […]. [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]
Adjectives inflected like perverse
serene,
severe,
secure,
sedate,
wheelie,
simple,
complete,
fulsome,
sprightlie,
discrete,
plosive,
bizarre,
brusque,
brittle,
wholesome,
sincere,
shystie,
loveable,
prophane,
terrible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
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”).
Verbs referencing "perverse"
Finnish Adjectives
perverssi.