deviant
/ˈdiː.vi.ənt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.03 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Characterized by deviation from an expectation or a social standard.
noun
A thing, phenomenon, or trend that deviates from an expectation or pattern.
Example Sentences
- "At the trial, the extent of his deviant behaviour became clear."
- "He’s like more successful but equally morally abhorrent right-wing undercover operative James O’Keefe’s non-union Mexican equivalent, a dunce whose one move involves incompetently attempting to frame figures of seemingly unimpeachable moral integrity, like Robert Mueller or good old Mayor Pete, as deviant sex criminals like Wohl’s God Donald Trump by unsuccessfully trying to get people to come forward with bogus sexual assault allegations."
- "He was branded as a deviant and ostracized."
- "As the graph shows, the March sales trend is the deviant."
- "In contrast to Flickr, deviantArt offers a broad range of user affordances, enabling both synchronous and asynchronous interpersonal and group communication, as well as networking with other deviants and the surveillance of the work of others (through the deviantWATCH affordance)."
- "While I myself have no problems as far as favoriting instead of commenting is concerned, since a lot of deviants are like this, I thought it was right to tell people how to comment correctly."
Etymology
From Middle English devyaunt (“deviating, different”), from Late 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”. * (DeviantArt member): So called because the website was originally for people who modified (deviated) computer applications.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: devyaunt, dēviāns
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /ˈdiː.vi.ənt/