Word.ws English Dictionary

deviant

/ˈdiː.vi.ənt/

deviant adjective: characterized by deviation from an expectation or a social standard.

Adjective

deviant (comparative more deviant, superlative most deviant)

  1. Characterized by deviation from an expectation or a social standard.
    • 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...2019 May 1, Nathan Rabin, “My World of Flops Get a Load of This Maroon Case File #121/My Year of Flops # 18 Jacob Wohl”, in Nathan Rabin's Happy Place
    Synonyms:
    deviate

Noun (1)

deviant (plural deviants)

  1. A person who deviates, especially from norms of social behavior.
    • He was branded as a deviant and ostracized.
    Synonyms:
    heteroclite
  2. A thing, phenomenon, or trend that deviates from an expectation or pattern.
    • As the graph shows, the March sales trend is the deviant.
    Synonyms:
    abnormality
  3. (Internet) A member of the online art community DeviantArt.
    • 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).2014, Peter Mechant, Lieven De Marez, “Studying Web 2.0 Interactivity: A Research Framework and Two Case Studies”, in Cyber Behavior: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications: Concepts...
    • 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.2009, Grekkikay, post on how to critique art; quoted in Linda Vigdor, “Constructing Learning through the Creative Evaluation of Visual Arts Production”, in Hiesun Cecilia Suhr, editor, Online...

Noun (2) capitalized: Deviant

Deviant (plural Deviants)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of deviant (“a member of the online art community DeviantArt”).
    • Matuszczak credits the advice offered up by fellow “Deviants” for his artistic and technical development. […] In such a thicket of creativity, notes Gamiddo, who says he spends up to 10 hours a week on the site, “you have to do some work to get noticed. You get what you give.” In keeping with this...2006 March 1, Deidre Stein Greben, “Cool 2 Know, deviantART.com”, in Newsday, page B02
    • Cosgrove is one of many Deviants — as DeviantArt users call themselves — who believe that the unbiased commentary and advice of his peers has been crucial in their professional advancement. […] Cosgrove has created a tutorial about what he does and studies tutorials fellow Deviants have posted.2006 August 9, Chris Marlowe, “Designer takes Deviant path to career success”, in The Hollywood Reporter, volume 395, page 6

Examples of deviant in a sentence

  • Our data stem from these DD’s and galleries of the corresponding deviants and were acquired directly from dA Headquarters.2013 February 22, Alkim Almila Akdag Salah, Albert Ali Salah, “Flow of innovation in deviantArt: following artists on an online social...
  • Many deviants strongly criticized the sharing features as facilitating art theft (Herr-Stephenson & Perkel, 2008; Perkel, 2011).2016, Brian Lee Jones, “Deviously Deviant: The Strange Tapestry that is deviantART.com”, in Barbara Guzzetti, Mellinee Lesley, editors...
  • “Deviants continue to own their own works,” [Angelo] Sotira wrote.2017 February 24, Natt Garun, “Wix has acquired DeviantArt, which may let artists license their work for the site builder”, in The Verge:

All 16 example sentences with deviant

Synonyms of deviant

All synonyms of deviant

Forms of deviant

Adjective
comparativemore deviant
superlativemost deviant
Noun
pluraldeviants
pluralDeviants

Origin of deviant

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.

Words formed from deviant

Questions about deviant

What does deviant mean?
Deviant means characterized by deviation from an expectation or a social standard.
How do you use deviant in a sentence?
Our data stem from these DD’s and galleries of the corresponding deviants and were acquired directly from dA Headquarters.
What part of speech is deviant?
Deviant can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce deviant?
Deviant is pronounced /ˈdiː.vi.ənt/ (UK).

Words near deviant in the dictionary

  1. deviable
  2. deviance
  3. deviances
  4. deviancies
  5. deviancy
  6. deviant
  7. deviantization
  8. deviantize
  9. deviantized
  10. deviantizes
  11. deviantizing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deviant (page history and authors); Deviant (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-deviant.wav.

Cite this entry: “deviant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deviant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.