invert
[verb in-vurt; adjective, noun in-vurt]
- to turn upside down.
- to reverse in position, order, direction, or relationship.
- to turn or change to the opposite or contrary, as in nature, bearing, or effect: to invert a process.
- to turn inward or back upon itself.
- to turn inside out.
- Chemistry. to subject to inversion.
- Music. to subject to musical inversion.
- Phonetics. to articulate as a retroflex vowel.
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- Chemistry. to become inverted.
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- Chemistry. subjected to inversion.
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- a person or thing that is inverted.
- a homosexual.
- (in plumbing) that portion of the interior of a drain or sewer pipe where the liquid is deepest.
- an inverted arch or vault.
- Philately. a two-colored postage stamp with all or part of the central design printed upside down in relation to the inscription.
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Origin of invert
Synonym study
2. See reverse.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
upturned, disordered, reversed, upset, confused, tangled, overturned, jumbled, upended, backward, haywire, helter-skelter, mixed-up, topsy-turvyExamples from the Web for inverted
Contemporary Examples
The flier itself shows an inverted Islamic State flag, with Arabic script below it.
The painting is mostly a bone-colored affair, as the background overwhelms the inverted spiral of the levels of Hell.
Fact-Checking Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’: 10 Mistakes, False Statements, and OversimplificationsNoah Charney
May 20, 2013
This inverted morality creates maniacs whose antics are referenced with a smile and a wink, not a harrumph.
Historical Examples
After you turn them out, spread them on an inverted sieve to cool.
Directions for Cookery, in its Various BranchesEliza Leslie
What an anomaly in political architecture, to build an inverted pyramid!
Alice, or The Mysteries, CompleteEdward Bulwer-Lytton
In a concave mirror the top and bottom are inverted, but this is no transposition.
TimaeusPlato
A disregarded doll lay with inverted head on the counterpane.
The ManxmanHall Caine
They have read the fable of the sun and the wind backwards, and inverted the moral.
Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume II.Charles James Lever
invert
- to turn or cause to turn upside down or inside out
- (tr) to reverse in effect, sequence, direction, etc
- (tr) phonetics
- to turn (the tip of the tongue) up and back
- to pronounce (a speech sound) by retroflexion
- logic to form the inverse of a categorial proposition
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- psychiatry
- a person who adopts the role of the opposite sex
- another word for homosexual
- architect
- the lower inner surface of a drain, sewer, etcCompare soffit (def. 2)
- an arch that is concave upwards, esp one used in foundations
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Word Origin
C16: from Latin invertere, from in- ² + vertere to turn
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for inverted
invert
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
invert
(ĭn-vûrt′)- To turn inside out or upside down.
- To reverse the position, order, or condition of.
- To subject to inversion.
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- Something inverted.
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The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.