Other forms: upsetting, upsets
Upset means sad and shaken by something that has just happened. She was upset about the letter. He got upset. It is the ordinary English word for distressed, and it is milder than devastated and stronger than annoyed.
The same word is a verb and it is irregular in a hidden way: upset, upset, upset — no change at all. To upset somebody is to make them feel that way; to upset a plan is to disturb it; to upset a glass is to knock it over. And an upset stomach is one that is unsettled, which is where a stomach upset comes from. The stress moves: the adjective and noun are UP-set, the verb is up-SET.
1adjectiveupsetSad or shaken by something that happened.~23%
“She was too upset to talk about it.”
synonyms: distressed, shaken
2verbdistressedTo make somebody sad or distressed.~7%
“I did not mean to upset anybody.”
3verbknockTo knock something over, or disturb a plan.~2%
“The cat upset the whole vase.”
4noununexpectedAn unexpected result, especially in sport.~68%
“The result was the biggest upset of the round.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense (4 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
upset is a state of distress.
Middle English upset meant to set up — the two halves in their plain senses. It reversed completely: the modern meaning is to knock over rather than to erect, and the older sense has vanished except in the specialist upset price at an auction, meaning the reserve.
Middle English
upset — the act of setting up; establishment
English, today
upset
From Middle English upset (“the act of setting up; establishment”), from Middle English upsetten, corresponding to up- + set. Cognate with Middle Low German upset (“setup; arrangement”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA