Talk:perverse

relating to unusual sexual activities

relating to or practicing sexual activities considered unusual or unacceptable; perverted
Microsoft® Encarta® 2009

--Backinstadiums (talk) 16:28, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

4. cranky

4. cranky or peevish --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:58, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: August 2021

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perverse

Rfv-sense: Turned aside what does that even mean? Queenofnortheast (talk) 13:45, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

It's probably some heraldry thing. DTLHS (talk) 16:28, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Apparently as in "turned aside (or away) from the (morally) right". It may be an "etymological definition" that doesn't really exist separately from the familiar connotations, or perhaps it existed once in this more literal sense and needs an "obsolete" label. This definition occurs in old dictionaries, and appears to have been copied willy nilly. Mihia (talk) 16:30, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

What’s with pervert (“to turn another way”) then? The definition is redundant to the “wayward” one though. It is more like “turned against”, hence the more figurative senses. “Perverse events” and “circumstances” there are, so it is like adverse. “Etymologically”, it is the opposite of “converse”, that which has converted to the true faith™, but apparently it has also always meant those which endanger those subject to conversion, being contrary to them (hence in the verb: to divert, like splitting up and making ambivalent. per- hasn’t really ever denoted “away”). Fay Freak (talk) 14:08, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

I think you’re onto something, as a search in in GoogleBooks for ‘perverse stream’ yields many hits where it clearly means ‘diverted stream’. ‘pervert’ can also mean ‘reflect’(in the sense of ‘produce a mirror image of’) or ‘change the chirality of’. Just search GoogleBooks for ‘chiral perversion’ and ‘perverted image of the object’; there is, in fact, a Wikipedia article called ‘tendril perversion’ which refers to the phenomenon of plant tendrils changing chirality.Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:25, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

cited Kiwima (talk) 00:29, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

pronunc of noun

is it with initial stress, like transverse? (I thought traverse was too, at least as an alt, but it seems not). —Soap— 14:19, 1 January 2024 (UTC)