PERVERSENESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does perverseness mean? 

• PERVERSENESS (noun)
  The noun PERVERSENESS has 2 senses:

1. deliberate and stubborn unruliness and resistance to guidance or discipline

2. deliberately deviating from what is good

  Familiarity information: PERVERSENESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERVERSENESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Deliberate and stubborn unruliness and resistance to guidance or discipline

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

contrariness; perverseness; perversity

Hypernyms ("perverseness" is a kind of...):

fractiousness; unruliness; wilfulness; willfulness (the trait of being prone to disobedience and lack of discipline)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "perverseness"):

cussedness; orneriness (meanspirited disagreeable contrariness)

Derivation:

perverse (resistant to guidance or discipline)

perverse (marked by a disposition to oppose and contradict)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Deliberately deviating from what is good

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

perverseness; perversity

Context example:

there will always be a few people who, through macho perversity, gain satisfaction from bullying and terrorism

Hypernyms ("perverseness" is a kind of...):

evil; evilness (the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice)

Derivation:

perverse (deviating from what is considered moral or right or proper or good)

 Context examples 

She blushed again and again over the perverseness of the meeting.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

But this, from the momentary perverseness of impatient suffering, she at first refused to do.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

But the success has not hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum or composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards, before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence, as the prescription requires.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It is very hard to think that she might have been Mr. Collins's wife by this time, had it not been for her own perverseness.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Are those who have been disappointed in their first choice, whether from the inconstancy of its object, or the perverseness of circumstances, to be equally indifferent during the rest of their lives?

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

When they sat down to supper, therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness which placed them within one of each other; and deeply was she vexed to find that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady Lucas) freely, openly, and of nothing else but her expectation that Jane would soon be married to Mr. Bingley.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

She soon learnt that they were indebted for their present good understanding to the efforts of his aunt, who did call on him in her return through London, and there relate her journey to Longbourn, its motive, and the substance of her conversation with Elizabeth; dwelling emphatically on every expression of the latter which, in her ladyship's apprehension, peculiarly denoted her perverseness and assurance; in the belief that such a relation must assist her endeavours to obtain that promise from her nephew which she had refused to give.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

She felt all the perverseness of the mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought, and, to prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first that it was a favourite haunt of hers.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

As he quitted the room, Elizabeth felt how improbable it was that they should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality as had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire; and as she threw a retrospective glance over the whole of their acquaintance, so full of contradictions and varieties, sighed at the perverseness of those feelings which would now have promoted its continuance, and would formerly have rejoiced in its termination.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)