sub·vert

(səb-vûrt′)

tr.v. sub·vert·ed, sub·vert·ing, sub·verts

1. To overthrow or destroy (a government or an established order or authority). See Synonyms at overthrow.

2. To undermine, overturn, or render ineffective (a rule or an established notion, such as a stereotype, for example).

3. To cause to serve a purpose other than the original or established one; commandeer or redirect: "a short, virus-like piece of DNA that replicates itself ... by subverting the cell's DNA replication machinery" (Richard Dawkins).

4. To undermine, mislead, or betray: "Willy's batch of unexamined dreams and aspirations confused, misled, and subverted him" (Joseph Badaracco).

[Middle English subverten, from Old French subvertir, from Latin subvertere : sub-, sub- + vertere, to turn; see wer- in Indo-European roots.]

sub·vert′er n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

subverter - a radical supporter of political or social revolution

revolutionary, revolutionist, subversive

counterrevolutionary, counterrevolutionist, counter-revolutionist - a revolutionary whose aim is to reverse the changes introduced by an earlier revolution

dynamiter, dynamitist - a person who uses dynamite in a revolutionary cause

Girondin, Girondist - a member of the moderate republican party that was in power during the French Revolution; the Girondists were overthrown by their more radical rivals the Jacobins

freedom fighter, insurgent, insurrectionist, rebel - a person who takes part in an armed rebellion against the constituted authority (especially in the hope of improving conditions)

radical - a person who has radical ideas or opinions

Translations

sovvertitore

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

That your friends will be driven into exile and deprived of citizenship, or will lose their property, is tolerably certain; and you yourself, if you fly to one of the neighbouring cities, as, for example, Thebes or Megara, both of which are well governed, will come to them as an enemy, Socrates, and their government will be against you, and all patriotic citizens will cast an evil eye upon you as a subverter of the laws, and you will confirm in the minds of the judges the justice of their own condemnation of you.

View in context

it will yet thank you for o'erthrowing it, ye subverters!

View in context

But whether the cultural subverter seeks perverted sex or unrestrained power, the result of "emancipating" children is the same: moral anarchy followed by the rise of the total state.

The "emancipated" child: the UN aims to free children from parental authority and make them wards of the state, a move that will abolish the family and leave children vulnerable to sexual exploitation. (Child Grab)

He has neither joined the Liberation Front nor enrolled at the university to help liberate his people with knowledge and a pen, but has instead become a kind of artist-criminal, subverter of authority, enemy of the state, and perpetual asker of questions.

Nuruddin Farah's Maps: Deterritorialization and "The Postmodern"

Perhaps the most immediately remarkable aspect of the resulting cogitations is the fact that, while the avatars of alternative have always been eager to identify their movement as a subverter of the moral order of the impossibly straitlaced Doles, Helmses and Quayles of the world (see, for example, the strident pseudoacademic liberation talk that permeates Spin's recent "Year in Music"), no one has yet thought to attribute alternative's demise to the sinister machinations of Philip Morris or the best-selling hallucinations of Robert Bork.

Authenticity crisis, baby

Ela usa as expressoes "desnaturalizar genero" a fim de descrever a proliferacao de performances "drag" como forma de subverter normas hegemonicas.

Gender Construction, Kinship and Mourning in Paris Is Burning/ Construcao de genero, lacos afetivos e luto em Paris Is Burning

No entanto, num segundo momento, ira subverter a narrativa dando protagonismo a representacao da mulher, como sujeito e nao apenas objeto do espectador.

Nicola Constantino in dialogue with the Great Masters/Nicola Constantino em dialogo com os Grandes Mestres

Para Good (7), a experiencia da dor e de outras condicoes cronicas ameaca sistematicamente subverter, descontruir ou reconstruir o mundo vital em busca de significado.

Narratives of the parents' experience of children with cystic fibrosis/Narrativas da experiencia de pais de criancas com fibrose cistica/Narrativas de la experiencia de padres de ninos con fibrosis quistica

Essas proteses, assim como a performatividade, podem ser apropriadas de forma que os processos de subjetivacao tanto podem reproduzir e fortalecer as normas de genero, como podem subverter e questionar essas mesmas normas.

Prosthetical production of bodies: trans experiences and health policies/Producao protetica dos corpos: experiencias trans e politicas de saude

Filosofos como Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze e Felix Guattari convidam, a partir de contextos proprios, a derivar das normas, subverter convencoes e com isso subverter tambem os mapas, quando estes sao entendidos e utilizados apenas como decalques da realidade (OLIVEIRA Jr., 2012).

Dossie: mapas rizomaticos e novas cartografias