Definition of UPEND

Examples of upend in a Sentence

He upended the bicycle to fix its flat tire.
I upended the bucket to use as a stool.
The security inspector upended my bag and dumped everything out.
A giant wave upended the surfers.
The midfielder was upended before he got the ball.

Recent Examples of upend from the Web

The governor signed a new budget at 1:03 a.m. on Tuesday, but not before residents saw state business temporarily upended.

— jess bidgood, julie bosman and alexander burns, New York Times, "Caught in Budget Tugs of War, States Teeter on the Brink", 3 July 2017
In a sense, the Gulf monarchies have worried about their long-term stability ever since late 2010, when a series of popular uprisings started upending autocratic regimes across the Middle East and North Africa.

— eric trager, The Atlantic, "The Muslim Brotherhood Is the Root of the Qatar Crisis", 2 July 2017
From Yves Saint Laurent popularizing the trouser for women with his Le Smoking to Keith Richards upending menswear norms by pilfering from girlfriend Anita Pallenberg's closet, fashion during the end of the '60s was more revolution than evolution.

— scott christian, Esquire, "50 Years Later, 'Flower Power' Still Looks Pretty Damn Good", 29 June 2017
The company attributes the industry-wide weakness to a lack of exciting new options since Greek yogurt upended the market.

— candice choi, The Seattle Times, "After Greek and Icelandic, is French the next trendy yogurt?", 26 June 2017
For 20-odd hours you’d been fed a generic tale of revenge, and then suddenly Monolith decided to upend Tolkien’s whole universe and create a (paradoxical) second One Ring.

— hayden dingman, PCWorld, "Hands-on: Middle Earth: Shadow of War gets more creative with Tolkien's universe", 21 June 2017
Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are now worth nearly $3 trillion, having upended or assimilated a vast swath of the U.S. economy.

— maya kosoff, The Hive, "The Real Reason Tech Billionaires Should Fear Trump", 19 June 2017
With its strategy upended, May’s government was battling to give the impression of business as usual before the start of talks on Monday.

— robert hutton, Bloomberg.com, "May Is Living the Weak, Unstable Brexit Nightmare She Warned Of", 16 June 2017
In his high-stakes strategy to overhaul the federal health law, President Donald Trump is threatening to upend the individual health insurance market with several key policies.

— julie rovner, Kaiser Health News, "If Insurance Market Crashes, Can Lawmakers Put The Pieces Back Together?", 8 June 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'upend'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.