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UPSIDE DOWN
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I. (adverb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
In an inverted manner
Example:
the box was lying on the floor upside down
Classified under:
Context examples:
The letters were upside down to me from where I sat, but Lucy was more opposite to them, so she leant over and read:—Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in the hope of a glorious resurrection, on July, 29, 1873, falling from the rocks at Kettleness.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The whole place was turned upside down, drawers burst open, and presses ransacked, with the result that an odd volume of Pope’s ‘Homer,’ two plated candlesticks, an ivory letter-weight, a small oak barometer, and a ball of twine are all that have vanished.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
On going up to put away her best hat, Jo's first look was toward the bureau, for in their last quarrel Amy had soothed her feelings by turning Jo's top drawer upside down on the floor.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing on their feet.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
That, perhaps, in short, this Prerogative Office of the diocese of Canterbury was altogether such a pestilent job, and such a pernicious absurdity, that but for its being squeezed away in a corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, which few people knew, it must have been turned completely inside out, and upside down, long ago.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Just come and help me put these books to rights, for I've turned everything upside down, trying to discover what he has done with the six new handkerchiefs I gave him not long ago.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
