upset
/ʌpˈsɛt/ verb B2- 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 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).
He/she/it upsets · Past upset · Past participle upset · -ing form upsetting
Verb forms
- Base form
- upset
- He/she/it
- upsets
- Past
- upset
- Past participle
- upset
- -ing form
- upsetting
An irregular verb: learn its past and past participle by heart.
From the library
“‘“Then we run another risk,” said the general, laughing, “that of being upset.” We insert this joke to prove that the general was not in the least compelled to attend the meeting, but that he came willingly.
“Here!” cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of goldfish she had accidentally upset the week before.
As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of being upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and handed back to them, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the accident, all except the Lizard, who seemed too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth open, gazing up into the roof of the court.
Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog--to and fro on the floor, up and down, and around in great circles, but his eyes were red and he held on as the body cart-whipped over the floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap dish and the flesh brush, and banged against the tin side of the bath.
Other matches
Learn upset in real texts
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