• • (British) IPA: /ɪnˈvɜːt/
  • (America) enPR: ĭn-vərtʹ, IPA: /ɪnˈvɝt/
  • (British) IPA: /ˈɪnvɜːt/
  • (America) enPR: ĭnʹvərt, IPA: /ˈɪnvɝt/

invert (inverts, present participle inverting; 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.

   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act V, scene ii]:

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

   • 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.
5. (anatomy) To turn (the foot) inwards.

• inversion

• French: invertir
• German: invertieren
• Italian: invertire
• Portuguese: inverter
• Spanish: invertir

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.
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