invert

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English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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From Middle French invertir.

Verb

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invert (third-person singular simple present inverts, present participle inverting, simple past and past participle inverted)

  1. (transitive) To turn (something) upside down or inside out; to place in a contrary order or direction.
    to invert a cup, the order of words, rules of justice, etc.
    • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:
      That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears, / As if these organs had deceptious functions.
    • 1781 (date written), William Cowper, “Table Talk”, in Poems, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1782, →OCLC, page 4:
      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.
  2. (transitive, music) To move (the root note of a chord) up or down an octave, resulting in a change in pitch.
  3. (chemistry, intransitive) To undergo inversion, as sugar.
  4. To divert; to convert to a wrong use.
    • 1603, Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, […], London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC:
      [H]e had miſgouerned the ſtate, inuerted his treaſures to his owne priuat […]
  5. (anatomy) To turn (the foot) inwards.
Derived terms
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Translations
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See also
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Noun

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invert (plural inverts)

  1. (architecture) An 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.[1]
  3. (civil engineering) The lowest point inside a pipe at a certain point.
  4. (civil engineering) An elevation of a pipe at a certain point along the pipe.
  5. A skateboarding 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. (obsolete, psychology) A homosexual person, in terms of the sexual inversion theory.
    • 1897, W. Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion, page 202:
      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.
  7. (Internet slang, conspiracy theories) Of a person, assumed to be transgender, in terms of transvestigation. [from 2010s]
Translations
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Adjective

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invert (not comparable)

  1. (chemistry) Subjected to the process of inversion; inverted; converted.
    invert sugar

Etymology 2

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Noun

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invert (plural inverts)

  1. (zoology, informal) An invertebrate.

References

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  1. ^ invert (in'‑vert) The floor or bottom of the internal cross section of a closed conduit, such as an aqueduct, tunnel, or drain - The term originally referred to the inverted arch used to form the bottom of a masonry‑lined sewer or tunnel (Jackson, 1997) Wilson, W.E., Moore, J.E., (2003) Glossary of Hydrology, Berlin: Springer

Anagrams

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