How to use deviant in a sentence

16 example sentences · adjective, noun

Deviant means characterized by deviation from an expectation or a social standard. Example: “At the trial, the extent of his deviant behaviour became clear.”

Examples of deviant by meaning

adjectiveCharacterized by deviation from an expectation or a social standard.

At the trial, the extent of his deviant behaviour became clear.

nounA person who deviates, especially from norms of social behavior.

He was branded as a deviant and ostracized.

nounA thing, phenomenon, or trend that deviates from an expectation or pattern.

As the graph shows, the March sales trend is the deviant.

nounA member of the online art community DeviantArt.

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...
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...

More sentences with deviant

There appear to be at least two distinct ways to assign levels of grammaticalness to deviant sentences.1967, Lawrence E. Marks, “Judgments of Grammaticalness of Some English Sentences and Semi-Sentences”, in The American Journal of…. From the entry grammaticalness
Transformed deviants tend to become not merely moral but hypermoral.2002, John Lofland, Deviance and Identity, page 282. From the entry extraregular
Essentially, the interviewer needs to specify environmental settings and subsettings for each of the child's deviant and desirable behaviors.1974, Edwin J. Thomas, Behavior Modification Procedure: A Sourcebook, page 143. From the entry subsetting
An ism does not have to possess the fearful implements of state power to cut off a deviant or heretical member.1965, Bertram David Wolfe, Marxism, One Hundred Years in the Life of a Doctrine, page 357. From the entry ism
But it is just as important not to let the yuck factor foreclose a deeper understanding of what deviant globalization is all about.2011, Nils Gilman, Steven Weber, Jesse Goldhammer, Deviant Globalization, page 14. From the entry yuck factor
Corrupting refers to things that parents do that "missocialize" the child in some way by encouraging and reinforcing more antisocial or deviant patterns of behavior.1992, J. Patrick Gannon, Soul Survivors: A New Beginning for Adults Abused as Children, page 36. From the entry missocialize
It's about time larger media outlets realize Rule 34 exists, is unavoidable, people will pay for it, and not everyone who draws and promotes it is a terrible deviant.2018 December 19, Richard Greenhill, “Pokémon Porn Exists If You Gotta Smash 'Em All”, in Vice. From the entry R34
More generally: If a sentence S1 lexically presumes a sentence S2 and S2 is false, then S1 will be heard as deviant in a particular way, viz., as mislexicalized.2015 November, William G. Lycan, “Slurs and lexical presumption”, in Language Sciences, volume 52. From the entry mislexicalize
To uphold the inequality that we choose to engage in, we regularly present the myth that trans people are deviant or a danger to cisgender people.2009 April 25, Renee Martin, The Guardian. From the entry cisgender
They also frequented the saloons and bordellos found in every western town, most of them equipped with a back room where all manner of deviant practices went on.2005, Annabelle du Fouet, “The murky world from whence it all came” (chapter 2), in Weather Balloons Make Rotten Sex Toys, Ellora's Cave…. From the entry ponyplay

Meaning of deviant

adjective Characterized by deviation from an expectation or a social standard.
noun A person who deviates, especially from norms of social behavior.
noun A thing, phenomenon, or trend that deviates from an expectation or pattern.

Full definition of deviant

Questions about deviant in a sentence

How do you use deviant in a sentence?: Deviant is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “At the trial, the extent of his deviant behaviour became clear.”
What is a short sentence with deviant?: “He was branded as a deviant and ostracized.”
What does deviant mean?: Deviant means characterized by deviation from an expectation or a social standard.

Adapted from Wiktionary: deviant (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use deviant in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/deviant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.