🔄 To turn upside down 🎵 To change order

to invert

3 7.0

Change the order of notes in a chord by moving the lowest one

verb
/ɪnˈvɜrt/

Specialized

: invertir

To add variety to our arrangement, we decided to invert the harmonies in the song.

So that's B augmented over C augmented and I'm going to invert them.

Examples

Sure, I can invert those intervals and play this too.
Now that we know what to look for, we're finding more and more inverted material.

Tenet (2020)
So how did he get them inverted?

Tenet (2020)
As they invert the entropy of more and more objects, the two directions of time are becoming more intertwined.

Tenet (2020)
It's also comical how the Maker/Taker trope inverts the Labor Theory of Value.

Blog text (13)
For that matter, in the year 2000, people throughout American society were inverting norms of dress that had persisted for centuries, if not millennia.

Fiction book (2001)
In music class, we learned how to invert the chord by placing the lowest note in a different position.
When composing, you can invert the melody to create a unique variation of your original theme.

Compounds

invert soap

Specialized

9.9

A detergent with a positive charge used to soften clothes

invert sugar

Specialized

6.0

A sweet syrup made by breaking down table sugar into two simple sugars found in honey and fruits

Surface Forms

invert infinitive

inverted past

inverted past participle

inverting present participle

inverts third person singular

Morphology

invert = in + vert

Although the form suggests in- + vert, 'vert' is not a standalone English word and the prefix here does not correspond to the common negative 'in-', so learners cannot reliably derive the meaning from component parts.

Etymology

Invert comes from Latin parts in- 'in' and vertere 'to turn' and shares the same root as the common word reverse. In music, to invert a chord is like 'turning' the order of the notes so the lowest note moves to a new place, which is why the word means changing the order or position of notes.