deviant

UK/ˈdiː.vi.ənt/

adjectiveC2Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,042 of 15,258neutral

Deviant means departing sharply from what is accepted as normal. Deviant behaviour, socially deviant, a deviant case.

In sociology it is neutral and technical: deviance is anything a society treats as outside its norms, which changes with the society. In ordinary speech it is heavily loaded and usually sexual, and it has been used to condemn a great deal that harmed nobody.

Definitions of deviant

1adjectivedeviantDeparting sharply from what is accepted as normal.C2
“The police psychologist studied the deviant behaviour of repeat offenders.”

deviant is a quality.

Remember it

DEVIant → it DIVIDEs off from the rest

One sheep leaves the flock and goes the other way. The road divides and it takes the side that nobody uses.

hooks ontodivide

Where it comes from

Latin deviare means to turn from the road — de plus via, a way. Deviate is the same verb.

Latin
dēviāns
Middle English
devyaunt — deviating, different
English, today
deviant

Built from

dēviō · Latin — to stray, deviate or detour

From Middle English devyaunt (“deviating, different”), from Latin dēviāns, present participle of dēviō (“to stray, deviate or detour”). The noun is from the adjective, possibly attested in Middle English with the meaning “one who goes astray”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

deviant in the wild

One form of classification often found in the literature is to distinguish between extended logics and deviant logics.
Philosophical logic
Philosopher Susan Haack uses the term deviant logic to describe certain non-classical systems of logic.
Deviant logic
A certain act or behaviour may be viewed as deviant and receive sanctions or punishments within one society and be seen as a normal behaviour in another society.
Deviance (sociology)
There are two types of major deviant actions: mala in se and mala prohibita.
Deviance (sociology)
The oddball paradigm relies on the brain's sensitivity to rare deviant stimuli presented pseudo-randomly in a series of repeated standard stimuli.
Oddball paradigm

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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