Perverts

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. To alter or distort a concept or a person's behavior, often in a harmful or immoral manner; to misrepresent facts or truths for personal gain or to serve an agenda; a person who engages in deviant sexual behavior or has an abnormal preference in sexual matters
2. To change something from its original state into something considered unacceptable or inappropriate; to twist information for manipulation or deception; someone whose sexual inclinations deviate from societal norms, fostering taboo practices
3. To influence or modify ideas and actions negatively, leading to corruption or wrongfulness; to present or interpret information with a misleading purpose; an individual exhibiting unusual or socially restricted sexual tastes and tendencies

Etymology: "Perverts" is the plural of "pervert", so the noun in its sense of a person with unusual sexual tastes is the form most readers will encounter first. The verb it comes from is older and more literal. Its source, Latin "pervertere", combined "per-", meaning "through" or "thoroughly", with "vertere", "to turn", so the root image is of something turned completely the wrong way. The word reached English through Old French "pervertir", which carried the same sense of turning something aside from its proper course. English took the verb in the sense of corrupting morals or judgment, and the noun for a person who has been so corrupted followed. Its later sexual sense developed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so the everyday meaning of the noun is a relatively recent narrowing of a broader idea of anyone turned from the right path.

Synonyms: deviants, distorts, corrupts

Antonyms: uplifts, improves, refines