UPSIDE DOWN

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does upside down mean? 

• UPSIDE DOWN (adverb)
  The adverb UPSIDE DOWN has 1 sense:

1. in an inverted manner

  Familiarity information: UPSIDE DOWN used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UPSIDE DOWN (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In an inverted manner

Context example:

the box was lying on the floor upside down

 Context examples 

You're a pretty colour, certainly; why, your liver, man, is upside down.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The act of turning inside out, upside down, or end-for-end.

(Inversion, NCI Thesaurus)

I hastened to comply with his friendly suggestion, and opening Peggotty's purse, turned it upside down into his hand.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

“Number four boat!” Oofty-Oofty cried, his keen eyes reading its number in the one second when it lifted clear of the foam, and upside down.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Why in the world should you spend your money, worry your family, and turn the house upside down for a parcel of girls who don't care a sixpence for you?

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

A procedure in which a rounded glass cup is warmed and placed upside down over an area of the body, creating suction that holds the cup to the skin.

(Cupping, NCI Dictionary)

The sled was upside down and jammed between a tree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs in order to straighten out the tangle.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The new, alternative models for some of the smaller lakes (tens of miles across) turns that theory upside down: It proposes pockets of liquid nitrogen in Titan's crust warmed, turning into explosive gas that blew out craters, which then filled with liquid methane.

(New Models Suggest Titan Lakes Are Explosion Craters, NASA)

Then the bed rolled on as if six horses were harnessed to it, up and down, over thresholds and stairs, but suddenly hop, hop, it turned over upside down, and lay on him like a mountain.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)