A noun for the fact of leaving what a group calls normal — and usually the group is not pleased. Sociologists use it as a cool, technical word: breaking a law, breaking a school rule, dressing in a way that shocks, even holding a belief the group hates, can all be studied as deviance. In everyday talk it sounds academic and a little cold. Though actually, what counts as deviance changes with time and place; yesterday’s strange can be today’s ordinary. It names the pattern or the state, not a single person.