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:
The earth does not upheave itself from beneath the sea and add new land to that already above water in response to our need for it.
From The National Being Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity by George William Russell
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
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
A queen in heaven while yet so young, Too high thou dost thyself upheave.
From The Pearl by Sophie Jewett
He loved to attack, to upheave, to overthrow.
From For the Faith by Evelyn Everett-Green
“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
But the newly upheaved anagram did not articulate intelligently.
From Time Magazine Archive
We seem to be living through the biologic revolution, so far anyway, without being upheaved or even much disturbed by it.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
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 captain was inclined to be corpulent and was full-blooded, so that, when the leaves covered him, he breathed heavily, and a close observer could notice a regular upheaving of the mass of leaves.
From The Bright Side of Prison Life Experience, In Prison and Out, of an Involuntary Soujouner in Rebellion by Samuel A. Swiggett
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
Once more the hundreds of centuries of erosion came, to be followed by the upheaving of the newer mountains of the Fourth or Quaternary Age.
From The Boy With the U.S. Miners by Francis Rolt-Wheeler
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
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
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
"An island uphove by an earthquake," said I. "Great thunder!" he cried.
From Stories by English Authors: the Sea by Various
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
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