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Glite Dictionary
to upend

to upend

23 5.5
Turn something so one end points up
  • verb
  • /ʌˈpɛnd/
translation icon : volcar
  • The strong winds can upend small boats during a storm.
  • upending traditional
  • upends the model

Examples

  • If you upend the bottle, the liquid will pour out quickly.

  • She decided to upend the vase to clean the table underneath.

  • So what that did was to upend many of the traditions we had about work.

  • A great deal of what is old will be quickly upended if it has not already been.

    Academic text (1999)

  • It's time to upend social structures that leave people feeling powerless.

  • And if he pulls America out of the WTOI think that would upend the global trading system as we know it.

  • A small jewelry box on her bureau had been upended, the pieces strewn around the room.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • But that balance, reflecting the nation's underlying principles, was upended again by the far more inclusive New Deal constitutional revolution.

    Academic text (2018)

  • Perry's announcement upended the GOP race as he quickly rocketed to the top of the polls.

    Academic text (2011)

  • Instead, political and ecological conceptions of planetary scale continually upend one another, remaining mutually unsettling.

    Academic text (2016)

Synonyms

to tip
vsto upend
148 1.8

To move something so it leans or falls to one side

makes the end stand fully upright rather than only tilting it
to turn over
vsto upend
31 2.6

Flip something so the other side faces up

makes the end stand upright or vertical
to overturn
vsto upend
30 4.1

Make something flip so it is upside down or on its side

makes the end stand upright instead of being upside down or sideways
to upturn
vsto upend
1 4.5

To turn something so its bottom faces up

makes the end stand upright rather than simply reversing sides

How Inverted

to invert
28 4.8
to overturn
30 4.1
to upend
23 5.5
to tilt
147 2.0

Surface Forms

upend infinitive
upended past
upended past participle
upending present participle
upends third person singular

Morphology

upend = end (transparent) = up + end

The meaning is directly recoverable from 'up' + 'end', referring to turning something so its end points upward. [Postprocessing: moved 'up' from base_words to prefix]

Etymology

Upend is made of the simple parts up and end, so it literally means to turn something so its 'end' is 'up'. A helpful image is tipping a box or a small boat until it stands on its end — that is why upend means to turn something into a 'upright' position.