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deviate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Verb
Noun and Adjective

From Late Latin dēviātus, perfect passive participle of dēviō, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) for more. Compare French dévier.

deviate (third-person singular simple present deviates, present participle deviating, simple past and past participle deviated)

  1. (intransitive) To go off course from; to change course; to change plans.
    • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:

      These two circumstances, however, happening both unfortunately to intervene, our travellers deviated into a much less frequented track; and after riding full six miles, instead of arriving at the stately spires of Coventry, they found themselves still in a very dirty lane, where they saw no symptoms of approaching the suburbs of a large city.

    • 1711 May, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Criticism, London: [] W[illiam] Lewis []; and sold by W[illiam] Taylor [], T[homas] Osborn[e] [], and J[ohn] Graves [], →OCLC:

      Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, / May boldly deviate from the common track.

  2. (intransitive, figurative) To fall outside of, or part from, some norm; to stray.

    His exhibition of nude paintings deviated from the norm.

    • 2021 February 9, “The double-edged sword of movie stardom remains the same as it ever was: when a persona is so fixed in the public mind, it's what people love you for, and it becomes difficult to deviate from.”, in BBC[1]:

  3. (transitive) To cause to diverge.

to go off course from; to change course; to change plans

to cause to diverge

From a substantivation of Late Latin dēviātus, see Etymology 1 and -ate (noun-forming suffix) for more.

deviate (plural deviates)

  1. (sociology) A person with deviant behaviour; a deviant, degenerate or pervert.
    Synonyms: deviant, degenerate, pervert
    • 1915, James Cornelius Wilson, A Handbook of medical diagnosis[2]:

      [] Walton has suggested that it is desirable "to name the phenomena signs of deviation, and call their possessors deviates or a deviate as the case may be []

    • 1959, Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, Kurt W. Back, Social Pressures in Informal Groups: A Study of Human Factors in Housing[3]:

      Under these conditions the person who appears as a deviate is a deviate only because we have chosen, somewhat arbitrarily, to call him a member of the court []

    • 2001, Rupert Brown, Group Processes[4]:

      [] The second confederate was also to be a deviate initially []

  2. (statistics) A value equal to the difference between a measured variable factor and a fixed or algorithmic reference value.
    • 1928, Karl J. Holzinger, Statistical Methods for Students in Education[5]:

      It will be noted that for a deviate x = 1.5, the ordinate z will have the value .130 []

    • 2001, Sanjeev B. Sarmukaddam, Indrayan Indrayan, Abhaya Indrayan, Medical Biostatistics[6]:

      This difference is called a deviate. When a deviate is divided by its SD a, it is called a relative deviate or a standard deviate.

    • 2005, Michael J. Crawley, Statistics: An Introduction Using R[7]:

      This is a deviate so the appropriate function is qt. We need to supply it with the probability (in this case p = 0.975) and the degrees of freedom...

sociology: a person with deviant behaviour; a deviant, degenerate or pervert

From Late Latin dēviātus, see Etymology 1 and -ate (adjective-forming suffix) for more.

deviate

  1. (sociology) deviant
    • 1987 February 1, Kim Westheimer, quoting John Gillespie, “Rawhide Boys”, in Gay Community News, volume 14, number 28, page 2:

      It's somewhat in vogue to give special attention and consideration to the alternative lifestyle, which five years ago we would have called the deviate lifestyle.

deviate

  1. second-person plural present present subjunctive/imperative of deviare

dēviāte

  1. second-person plural present active imperative of dēviō