upheave
Americanverb (used with object)
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to heave or lift up; raise up or aloft.
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to force or throw up violently or with much power, as an erupting volcano.
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to cause a major disturbance or disorder in.
The revolution upheaved the government, causing its leaders to flee the country.
verb (used without object)
verb
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to heave or rise upwards
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geology to thrust (land) upwards or (of land) to be thrust upwards
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(tr) to disturb violently; throw into disorder
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of upheave
First recorded in 1250–1300, upheave is from the Middle English word upheven. See up-, heave
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Therefore a time would come when the elastic and explosive forces of the imprisoned gases would upheave this ponderous cover and drive out for themselves openings through tall chimneys.
From A Journey to the Interior of the Earth by Jules Verne
Every upheave seemed to be followed by a downward settling plunge, as though the ship were already on her way to the bottom.
From A Veldt Vendetta by Bertram Mitford
Father, we confess, And were our arms unbound, we would upheave Our sinful hands with sorrowing hearts to heaven.
From A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 8 by William Carew Hazlitt
Brown rocks, left bare by the receding tide, upheave their slippery backs, heavily festooned with seaweed, and the broad level sands lie wet and glistening in the sun.
From Dorrien of Cranston by Bertram Mitford
Every day of my life I will upheave my soul from its inmost fastenings, and not suffer a blur to settle upon it.
From Black Forest Village Stories by Berthold Auerbach
“If I had known, I’d have had a heart attack,” he said also, a reference to a point when things went especially upheaved.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 1, 2022
The 2014 shooting of Michael Brown upheaved many things in the U.S., including the career of DeRay Mckesson, who quit his job as an educator to become a full-time activist.
From Slate ● Sep. 11, 2018
Her well-to-do lifestyle is upheaved by news of her husband leaving her for another woman.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 29, 2017
He traces the origin of petroleum to volcanic disturbances which in early geological times upheaved the water and land surface of the earth and killed immense quantities of fish.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Ice was not so upheaved and tormented as in the Fire-Hills region, but it was rotten.
From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin
But as other states have led the way in upheaving their systems, Washington has been slow to follow suit.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 23, 2022
The first time I came to Hammars, I was barely a year old and knew nothing about the great and upheaving love that had brought me there.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 10, 2018
The nervousness which resulted from hard work and a long struggle for existence had not only given him palsy, but had left him with an upheaving diaphragm.
From Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume I, Alabama Narratives by United States. Work Projects Administration
There was such a shouting, an upheaving, a frenzy, a delirium, that the very thought of it even now makes my head whirl.
From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 20, September, 1877. by Various
And now, once more, is there not an upheaving of humanity from beneath? and over society as it is, does not once more loom the shadow of a coming change?
From About London by J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie
"An island uphove by an earthquake," said I. "Great thunder!" he cried.
From Stories by English Authors: the Sea by Various
It lay, a black mass, and whether it was a vast huddle of weeds, or a great whale killed by the earthquake, or solid land uphove by the volcanic rupture, was not conjecturable.
From Stories by English Authors: the Sea by Various
The fire, communicating with a powder magazine, produced an explosion which uphove the buildings like an earthquake, and prostrated more than a third of a mile of the city walls.
From The Empire of Russia by John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
Vast showers of splinters of ice fell as if from the sky, and rained like arrows through the smoke, but if there were any great blocks uphove they did not touch the ship.
From The Frozen Pirate by W. Clark (William Clark) Russell
Then with the sobbing grief he strove, For he saw his name thereon; And the heart within his breast uphove As the pen's tale now he won.
From Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough by William Morris
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
