perverse

adj

1. Turned aside while against something, splitting off from a thing.

   “Any man who succeeds in diverting the public taste, or in turning back a perverse stream which will flow in the direction of the ditch, leaves a mark, as it were, and cannot be overlooked by posterity.”

   “But in the same sense are modern Nietzsche's screams against the perverse (diverted) diffusion of these elemental pleas to reason for “reasons,” for the reasons—and place—of our fall in nonsense.”

   “The diverted or perverse way is also not an easy path to walk. It is rightly called “crooked” and “twisting.””

2. Morally wrong or evil; wicked; perverted.
3. Obstinately in the wrong; stubborn; intractable.
4. Wayward; vexing; contrary.

   “[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across.[…]Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, and that in several cases these bacteria were dividing and thus, by the perverse arithmetic of biological terminology, multiplying.”

   “Where this perverse sign flip occurs depends on the values of other parameters […].”

5. Ignoring the evidence or the judge's opinions.

noun

1. (archaic)A chiral opposite of something; a mirror image with opposite handedness.

   “If two antipodal points move continuously on the sphere, they trace out what are called symmetric figures. These figures have corresponding elements equal, and are equal in area, but are not in general superposable. The one is, in fact, the perverse of the other.”

verb

1. (archaic, nonstandard)To pervert.

   “This rule hath been always for the commodity of that kingdom, where as the powers have been thus by them perversed.”

   “And though impartial history now and then cast the alow (halo) of a martyr over an unsuccessful patriot's grave; yet even that was not always sure; tyrants often perversed history, sullied by adulation or by fear; — but whetever that last verdict might have been; for him who dared to struggle against despotism, when he struggled in vain, there was no honor on earth; victorious tyranny marked the front of virtue with the brand of a criminal.”

   “That I have loved you My most puissant disciple I am the fabric of life and death Humanity has perversed the truth”

   “A second sun burst for an instant at first, Then glittered and glinted and twilight perversed And limbs limned in red quenched the sands of their thirst, The limbs of a human by all the Fates cursed;”