Perverse

How to spell perverse

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce perverse

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does perverse mean?

1. adjectiveShowing a deliberate and stubborn desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or contrary to what is expected.

Perverse in a sentence

• He took a perverse pleasure in arriving late to every meeting.

• It seems perverse to drive across town for petrol that costs barely a penny less.

Where does perverse come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin perversus, the past participle of pervertere, a verb that literally meant 'to turn the wrong way around' or 'to overturn'. It was built from the prefix per-, meaning 'thoroughly' or 'away', and the verb vertere, meaning 'to turn', so the original picture is of something twisted right out of its proper direction. From that physical sense of turning came the moral sense of being corrupted or set against what is right and reasonable. English took it in during the 1300s by way of Old French pervers, and it has carried the idea of stubborn wrongheadedness ever since. The same vertere root, 'to turn', still spins quietly inside many everyday relatives such as convert, reverse, version and divert, and noticing that 'vers' (turn) core is a tidy way to fix the spelling in mind.

How the word is built

• per- (thoroughly, away)
• vers (turn, from Latin vertere)
• -e