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:
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
In the realm of shades, on a throne of gold, By the side of her royal spouse, behold Fair Proserpine, With gloomy mien, While deep sighs upheave her bosom.
From Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine by Heinrich Heine
Miles—for though that speck in the sky into which they upheave their mighty altitudes, be doubtless an eagle, we cannot hear its cry.
From Recreations of Christopher North, Volume I (of 2) by John Lyde Wilson
Each body of water has its own currents, but when the hurricane is abroad they mysteriously intermingle, and from the ocean to the remotest mountain lake the same tremor will upheave them all.
From Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Louise Seymour Houghton
Others will upheave the blacksmith's hammer, or drive the plane over the carpenter's bench, or take the lapstone and the awl, and learn the trade of shoe-making.
From True Stories of History and Biography by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“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
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
If this is true, the forward step Italy is about to take need not, please God! be made in blood and violent social upheaving.
From Records of Later Life by Fanny Kemble
In a radical upheaving the people demand eternal principles on which to stand.
From The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper
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
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
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 by William Morris
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
"An island uphove by an earthquake," said I. "Great thunder!" he cried.
From Stories by English Authors: the Sea by Various
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