perversion

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English perversion,^[2][3] borrowed from Latin perversiō (“inversion, a turning round”),^[4][5][6][7] from perversus, the past participle of pervertō (“to turn about, turn the wrong way”),^[3][8] which is formed from per- and vertō (“to turn”).^[9] Johnson derived it from French perversion,^[10] but the OED only compares it with that word, recorded from 1444, and with Spanish perversión (1427–8) and Italian perversione (14th century).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The turning aside of something from what is right or true; corruption: before 1450, in the prologue to a commentary on Matthew, which calls any passage of scripture that seems to command "peruersion of soule" figurative.^[4][2] Etymonline and Dictionary.com date the word to the late 14th century,^[5][11] and the OED's manuscript copies a text of before 1387.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Latin already had the moral sense: besides the reversal of word order, the noun came to mean the falsifying of a text in the early 3rd century and depravity in the late 4th.^[4] In Middle English it was used of the soul and of justice,^[2] and Etymonline says that it first concerned religious belief.^[5] Johnson (1755) still gives only the general "change to something worse".^[10] A sexual sense is recorded by the OED from 1699, in Shaftesbury,^[4] but the psychological use for a disorder of sexual behaviour, dated by Etymonline to 1892, originally took in homosexuality as well.^[5] Medicine has used the word from 1834 for a bodily function changed in kind, not only in degree,^[4] and in 1881 Maxwell used it in geometry for a mirror image.^[4]

Timeline

• before 1450 – the action of turning something aside from what is true or right.^[4][2]
• 1699 – sexual behaviour differing from the norm.^[4] Etymonline dates the psychological sense to 1892.^[5]
• 1834 – in medicine, a function altered in kind.^[4]
• 1881 – in geometry, the forming of a mirror image.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of perverting something or someone, or the state of being perverted; a turning aside from what is true or right: a perversion of justice.^[3][12][4]
2. A distorted or corrupted form of something: The film is a perversion of the novel.^[12][3][6]
3. A sexual practice or interest regarded as abnormal.^[12][3][4]
4. (medicine) An alteration of a bodily function that makes it abnormal in kind, not just in degree; also, distortion of a body part.^[4]
5. (geometry, now rare) The forming of the mirror image of a figure; the image itself.^[4]

Word family

• perversive

Related words

• perverse
• pervert
• perverted

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins