Upturning

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A turning upward.

    "He suffered from frequent 'micro-crises' — upturnings of the eyeballs, associated with transient inability to move or respond; these lasted a few seconds only, and occurred dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of times a day."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of upturn form-of, gerund, participle, present

Example

More examples

"He suffered from frequent 'micro-crises' — upturnings of the eyeballs, associated with transient inability to move or respond; these lasted a few seconds only, and occurred dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of times a day."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From upturn + -ing.

Etymology 2

From Middle English upturnynge, equivalent to upturn + -ing and/or up- + turning.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.