Reverse

How to spell reverse

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce reverse

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reverse mean?

1. verbTo change something to its opposite, or to turn it the other way around.
2. nounThe opposite of something, or the back of an object such as a coin or page.
3. adjectiveActing or arranged in the opposite direction or order.

Reverse in a sentence

• verb

  The committee voted to reverse the earlier decision.

• noun

  The date is printed on the reverse of the certificate.

• adjective

  The list was sorted in reverse order, from newest to oldest.

• verb

  A court can reverse a ruling on appeal.

• noun

  The result was the exact reverse of what they expected.

• adjective

  The engine slipped into reverse gear before he could stop it.

Where does reverse come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb vertere, meaning 'to turn', whose past participle versus gave the form revertere, 'to turn back', from the prefix re- ('back, again'). The sense of turning something around or to its opposite came through Old French reverser before settling into English in the 1300s, first as a verb and then as a noun and adjective. The shared root vertere is remarkably productive in English: it lives on in 'convert', 'invert', 'divert', and 'version', all of which involve some kind of turning. Knowing that the middle is the 'vers' turning-root, the same one in 'version', helps fix the spelling and steer writers away from any urge to write a 'c'. The full word, then, literally means 'turned back'.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• vers (from Latin vertere: to turn)
• -e