deviant
/ˈdiːvɪənt
/adjective
1Departing from usual or accepted standards, especially in social or sexual behaviour: deviant behaviour a deviant ideology...
- He calls himself ‘a problem drinker, a user and occasional abuser of narcotics, a high school dropout, a pessimist prone to loose women and no stranger to prostitutes and deviant sexual behaviour’.
- Given these contradictory insights from the literature, the issue of deviant behaviour and informal social control in peer - to - peer networks needs more empirical research.
- This, in turn, reinforces the idea that children who exhibit any kind of sexual behavior are deviant in some way.
Synonyms
aberrant, deviating, divergent, abnormal, atypical, untypical, non-typical, anomalous, digressive, irregular, non-standard;
nonconformist, rogue, perverse, transgressing, wayward;
strange, odd, peculiar, uncommon, unusual, freak, freakish, curious, bizarre, eccentric, idiosyncratic, unorthodox, exceptional, singular, unrepresentative;
distorted, twisted, warped, perverted
informal bent, kinky, quirky
1.1 offensive Homosexual.
noun
A deviant person or thing: killers, deviants, and those whose actions are beyond most human comprehension...
- Norms use the clubs of stigma and shame to punish deviants, nonconformists, and radicals.
- Strip clubs are not a festering hive of perverts and deviants.
- Were you saying the behavior is deviant or they're deviants?
Synonyms
nonconformist, eccentric, maverick, individualist, exception, outsider, misfit, fish out of water, square peg in a round hole, round peg in a square hole
informal oddball, odd fish, weirdo, weirdie, freak, bad boy
North American informal screwball, kook
US informal wackadoo, wackadoodle
Origin
Late Middle English: from late Latin deviant- 'turning out of the way', from the verb deviare (see deviate).