Word.ws English Dictionary

turning upside down

turning upside down is the present participle and gerund of turn upside down.

Meaning of turn upside down

Verb

turn upside down (third-person singular simple present turns upside down, present participle turning upside down, simple past and past participle turned upside down)

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To flip over; to rotate top to bottom.
    • Turn the box upside down and look at the bottom.
    Synonyms:
    flip over, turn over
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To thoroughly examine.
    • They turned the house upside down looking for the car keys.
  3. (idiomatic, transitive) To alter (something) significantly, often in a negative way.
    • Rio Ferdinand will almost certainly miss out on Euro 2004, and possibly much more, because of the missed drug test which has turned his life upside down.2003 October 30, Daniel Taylor, “Ferdinand may miss Euro 2004”, in The Guardian

Questions about turning upside down

What is turning upside down the present participle and gerund of?
Turning upside down is the present participle and gerund of turn upside down.

Words near turning upside down in the dictionary

  1. turning up one's toes
  2. turning up the heat
  3. turning up the volume on
  4. turning up trumps
  5. turning upon
  6. turning upside down
  7. turning-away
  8. turning-beam
  9. turning-beams
  10. turning-evil
  11. turningness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turning upside down (page history and authors); turn upside down (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “turning upside down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/turning_upside_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.