Inversio

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A reversal in position, order, or relationship; the act of turning inside out or upside down; a rhetorical device involving the inversion of normal word order for emphasis
2. The state of being turned inward or upside down; a grammatical or stylistic shift of the usual sequence in language structure; the process of reversing a natural or expected arrangement
3. The condition characterized by the opposite arrangement or orientation; an expression in which words are reordered contrary to normal syntax for effect; the act of flipping or turning something to the contrary or opposite state

Etymology: "Inversio" is the Latin word for a turning around or upsetting, built from "invertere," meaning "to turn upside down or about." That verb combines "in-," meaning "in" or "into," with "vertere," "to turn," the same root that gives English "verse," "versatile," and "vortex." Its literal sense was physical, a turning over of something, and the metaphorical extensions of reversal and overturning came later in its Latin career. English borrowed the term as a technical word, and its uses spread from there. In rhetoric it names the reversal of the normal order of words in a sentence, and in grammar it describes the placing of a verb before its subject in questions such as "Are you coming?" Mathematics and music use it for the reflected or flipped form of a figure or sequence. Because each of these senses is a deliberate, specialised application of the Latin sense of turning over, the word reads as a scholarly term rather than an everyday one.

Synonyms: inversion, reversal, flip, turnaround, upturn

Antonyms: normalization, regularization, stability