The AI-powered English dictionary
third-person singular simple present upends, present participle upending, simple past and past participle upended
(transitive) To end up; to set on end. examples
To tip or turn over. quotations examples
Venezuela, who introduced the exciting 17-year-old Samuel Sosa late on, pressed forward and eventually carved out a golden opportunity to level. Jake Clarke-Salter, the Chelsea defender, upended Peñaranda inside the box and after consulting the threesome of video officials inside the Suwon World Cup stadium, the referee, Bjorn Kuipers, pointed to the spot.
2017 June 11, Ben Fisher, “England seal Under-20 World Cup glory as Dominic Calvert-Lewin strikes”, in the Guardian
(figurative) To destroy, invalidate, overthrow, or defeat. quotations examples
What is unbearable, in fact, is the feeling, 13 years after 9/11, that America has been chasing its tail; that, in some whack-a-mole horror show, the quashing of a jihadi enclave here only spurs the sprouting of another there; that the ideology of Al Qaeda is still reverberating through a blocked Arab world whose Sunni-Shia balance (insofar as that went) was upended by the American invasion of Iraq.
2014 November 17, Roger Cohen, “The horror! The horror! The trauma of ISIS ”, in The New York Times
To affect or upset drastically. examples