invert

From Middle French invertir

• (verb):
  • (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈvɜːt/
  • (US) enPR: ĭn-vərtʹ, IPA^(key): /ɪnˈvɝt/
  • Rhymes: -ɜː(r)t

  • Audio (Canada)

    (file)

• (noun):
  • (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɪnvɜːt/
  • (US) enPR: ĭnʹvərt, IPA^(key): /ˈɪnvɝt/

    • Audio (US)

      (file)

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.

   • Shakespeare

     That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears, / As if these organs had deceptious functions.

   • Cowper

     Such reasoning 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.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Knolles to this entry?)

• invert sugar
• inverted
• invertible

• inversion

• convert

invert (plural inverts)

1. (obsolete, psychology) A homosexual.
   • 1897, W. Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion, p. 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.

2. (architecture) An inverted arch (as in a sewer). *
3. 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]
4. (civil engineering) The lowest point inside a pipe at a certain point.
5. (civil engineering) An elevation of a pipe at a certain point along the pipe.
6. 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.
7. (zoology, informal) invertebrate

invert (not comparable)

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

   invert sugar

• ventri-, virent