upend.
To end up; to set on end.
Meaning & usage
To end up; to set on end.
To tip or turn over.
When he upended the bottle of water over his sleeping sister, the lid popped off and surprised them both.
upend the box and empty the contents
To destroy, invalidate, overthrow, or defeat.
The scientific evidence upended the popular myth.
To affect or upset drastically.
By the middle of March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic upended normal life for virtually all Americans.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree English up- Proto-Indo-European *h₂ent- Proto-Indo-European *h₂entíos Proto-Germanic *andijaz Proto-West Germanic *andī Old English ende Middle English ende English end English upend From up- + end.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.