invert

Verb

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 make (something) the opposite of it.
   • to invert a cup, the order of words, rules of justice, etc.
   • That doth inuert th’atteſt of eyes and eares, / As if thoſe organs were deceptions^([sic – meaning deceptious]) functions, […]c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. […] (First Quarto), London: […] G[eorge] Eld for R[ichard] Bonian and H[enry] Walley, […], published 1609...
2. (transitive) To move (the root note of a chord) up or down an octave, resulting in a change in pitch.
3. (intransitive) To undergo inversion, as sugar.
4. To divert; to convert to a wrong use.
   • [H]e had miſgouerned the ſtate, inuerted his treaſures to his owne priuat […]1603, Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, […], London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC
5. To turn (the foot) inwards.

Noun (1)

UK/ˈɪn.vət/US/ˈɪn.vəɹt/

invert (plural inverts)

1. 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.
3. The lowest point inside a pipe at a certain point.
4. An elevation of a pipe at a certain point along the pipe.
5. A skateboarding and snowboarding 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) A homosexual person, in terms of the sexual inversion theory.
   • 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...1897, W. Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion, page 202
7. (Internet, conspiracy theories) Of a person, assumed to be transgender, in terms of transvestigation.

Adjective

invert (not comparable)

1. Subjected to the process of inversion; inverted; converted.
   • invert sugar

Noun (2)

UK/ˈɪn.vət/US/ˈɪn.vəɹt/

invert (plural inverts)

1. (informal) An invertebrate.