subverse

From Latin subversus, past participle of subvertere. See subvert.

subverse (third-person singular simple present subverses, present participle subversing, simple past and past participle subversed)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To subvert.
   • 1591, Ed[mund] Sp[enser], Complaints. Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie. […], London: […] William Ponsonbie, […], →OCLC:

     But a usurping ape, with guile suborned, / Had all subversed

• “subverse”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

sub- +‎ -verse

subverse (plural subverses)

1. (science fiction) A kind of alternative universe.
   • 2011, Adam Douglas, The Square Root of Negative Forty-Two, page 108:

     You must be picking up olfactory emanations from a subverse destined to be your neighbor.

   • 2023, Adair Hart, The Final Evolution: Book 15 of The Evaran Chronicles:

     They had taken on a subverse being and come out on top, and although they did not name what had killed them, it must have been a cosmic being of supreme power.

• subserve

subverse

1. vocative masculine singular of subversus