diverse
di·verse
adjective
distinctly dissimilar or unlike
- “diverse parts of the country”
- “celebrities as diverse as Bob Hope and Bob Dylan”
- “animals as various as the jaguar and the cavy and the sloth”
Origin
From Middle English diversen (“to differ, diverge; to become different, change; to vary; to change or vary (something); to make a distinction, distinguish; to divert”), from Anglo-Norman diverser, Middle French diverser, and Old French diverser (“to alter, change; to differ, diverge; to disagree”), from Late Latin diversare (“to differ”), and then either: * a frequentative form of Latin dīvertere, the present active infinitive of dīvertō (see etymology 1); or * from dī- (variant of dis- (prefix meaning ‘apart, in two’)) + versāre (the present active infinitive of versō (“to alter, change; to keep turning, whirl”), a frequentative form of vertō: see etymology 1). Etymology 2 sense 1 (“synonym of diversify”) became obsolete in the 16th century, and was probably recoined in the 20th century.
Phrases
- gender diverse
Related words
Word family
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.