Darvo

//ˈdɑː.vəʊ// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Acronym of deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender, a behavior of perpetrators of wrongdoing (especially sexual offenders), when accused of attacking their victim, reversing the roles of victim and offender. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of, uncountable

    "And Nevils tweeted the acronym DARVO and spelled it out: “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.” DARVO is a “perpetrator strategy,” according to the professor who coined the term, Jennifer Freyd."

Example

More examples

"And Nevils tweeted the acronym DARVO and spelled it out: “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.” DARVO is a “perpetrator strategy,” according to the professor who coined the term, Jennifer Freyd."

Etymology

Acronym of “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender”. Coined by Jennifer J. Freyd in “Violations of power, adaptive blindness, and betrayal trauma theory” (1997), Feminism & Psychology.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.