invert

present singular third person inverts · participle present inverting · participle past inverted · past inverted

1. transitiveTo turn (something) upside down or inside out; to place in a contrary order or direction; to make (something) the opposite of itself.

   to invert a cup, the order of words, rules of justice, etc.

   3 more examples

   That doth inuert th’atteſt of eyes and eares, / As if thoſe organs were deceptions^([sic – meaning deceptious]) functions, […]

   c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. […] (First Quarto), London: […] G[eorge] Eld for R[ichard] Bonian and H[enry] Walley, […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii], signatures K3, verso – [K4], recto

   Seldom, alas! the power of logic reigns / With much ſufficiency in royal brains. / Such reaſ'ning falls like an inverted cone, / Wanting its proper baſe to ſtand upon.

   1781 (date written), William Cowper, “Table Talk”, in Poems, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1782, →OCLC, page 4

   ob-: used as a prefix inverts the term affixed.

   [1936], “Glossary of Botanical Terms Used”, in J[ames] S[ykes] Gamble, Flora of the Presidency of Madras, volume I, London: Adlard & Son, […], →OCLC, page xxix

2. transitiveentertainmentTo move (the root note of a chord) up or down an octave, resulting in a change in pitch.
3. intransitivechemistryTo undergo inversion, as sugar.
4. To divert; to convert to a wrong use.

   [H]e had miſgouerned the ſtate, inuerted his treaſures to his owne priuat […]

   1603, Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, […], London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC

5. anatomyTo turn (the foot) inwards.

plural inverts

1. architectureAn inverted arch (as in a sewer).
2. The base of a tunnel on which the road or railway may be laid and used when construction is through unstable ground. It may be flat or form a continuous curve with the tunnel arch.
3. civil engineeringThe lowest point inside a pipe at a certain point.
4. civil engineeringAn elevation of a pipe at a certain point along the pipe.
5. A skateboarding and snowboarding trick where the skater grabs the board and plants a hand on the coping so as to balance upside-down on the lip of a ramp.
6. obsoletehuman sciencesA homosexual person, in terms of the sexual inversion theory.

   1 more example

   We can seldom, therefore, congratulate ourselves on the success of any "cure" of inversion. The success is unlikely to be either permanent or complete, in the case of a decided invert; and in the most successful cases we have simply put into the invert's hands a power of reproduction which it is undesirable he should possess.

   1897, W. Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion, page 202

7. Internetconspiracy theoriesOf a person, assumed to be transgender, in terms of transvestigation.First known use 2010s
8. hobbiesA stamp accidentally printed upside-down.

1. not comparablechemistrySubjected to the process of inversion; inverted; converted.

   invert sugar

plural inverts

1. informalbiologyAn invertebrate.