upset.
Angry, distressed, or unhappy
Meaning & usage
Angry, distressed, or unhappy
He was upset when she refused his friendship.
My children often get upset with their classmates.
Feeling unwell, nauseated, or ready to vomit.
His stomach was upset, so he didn't want to move.
Bryan came home from school with an upset tummy.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English upset (“the act of setting up; establishment”), from Middle English upsetten, corresponding to up- + set. Cognate with Middle Low German upset (“setup; arrangement”).
Disturbance or disruption.
My late arrival caused the professor considerable upset.
An unexpected victory of a competitor or candidate that was not favored to win.
An overturn.
An upset stomach.
An upper set; a subset (X,≤) of a partially ordered set with the property that, if x is in U and x≤y, then y is in U.
The dangerous situation where the flight attitude or airspeed of an aircraft is outside the designed bounds of operation, possibly resulting in loss of control.
A woven row supporting the foundation rods for the uprights of a basket.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English upset (“the act of setting up; establishment”), from Middle English upsetten, corresponding to up- + set. Cognate with Middle Low German upset (“setup; arrangement”).
To make (a person) angry, distressed, or unhappy.
I’m sure the bad news will upset him, but he needs to know.
To disturb, disrupt or adversely alter (something).
Introducing a foreign species can upset the ecological balance.
The fatty meat upset his stomach.
To tip or overturn (something).
To defeat unexpectedly.
Truman upset Dewey in the 1948 US presidential election.
To be upset or knocked over.
The carriage upset when the horse bolted.
To set up; to put upright.
To thicken and shorten a soft or heated piece of metal, by forging or hammering on the end, to shape, for example, rivets or internal combustion engine valves.
To shorten (a tire) in the process of resetting, originally by cutting it and hammering on the ends.
To support with an upset (type of woven row).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English upset (“the act of setting up; establishment”), from Middle English upsetten, corresponding to up- + set. Cognate with Middle Low German upset (“setup; arrangement”).
Try it on your idea.
upset has 5 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.
These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.
Explore the name generatorA word with a source.
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.