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upside-down

UK/ˌʌpsaɪd ˈdaʊn/US/ˌʌpsaɪd ˈdaʊn/
adjectiveA2neutral

Upside-down means turned so that the top is now at the bottom. Inverted, and usually by accident.

The hyphenated form goes before a noun, so an upside-down cake or an upside-down map, and the unhyphenated version follows a verb. An upside-down cake is baked with the fruit at the bottom and turned out. There is a figurative sense about disorder, since an upside-down world is one where nothing works as it should, and children's books are full of them.

Definitions of upside-down

  1. 1adjectiveupside-downTurned so that the top is at the bottom.A2

    “He was holding an upside-down map and looking confident.”

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    up sid doun

  2. English

    upside down

  3. English, today

    upside-down

Built from

  • up-so-doun · Middle English — upside down

upside down comes from Middle English up sid doun, an alteration of earlier upsadowne, upsedowne, up-so-doun (“upside down”), equivalent to up + so + down.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 36 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

Related words

the up-so-doun family

upside downupside-down

upside-down — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others