Upend for Dummies

Upend means to turn something upside down or to change the traditional way something is done or understood. Let me break it down for you! Imagine you have a glass of water on a table, standing upright with the bottom part touching the table. Now, if you were to upend the glass, you would turn it around so that the bottom part is now pointing up in the air. So, upend here means to flip something over or to make it upside down.

But the word "upend" can also be used in a more figurative sense. It can describe a situation where something is changed or altered in a significant way. For example, let's say you and your friends are used to playing a game a certain way, where each of you takes turns and follows specific rules. But one day, someone comes up with a new way to play the game that completely changes how it is played. In this case, you can say that this new idea upended the traditional way of playing the game. It turned it upside down and introduced a whole new way of doing things.

So, to sum it up, to upend something means to turn it upside down or to change it in a significant way. It can be a physical action of flipping something over, like a glass, or it can be a metaphorical action of changing the traditional or established way of doing something.