Meaning of topsy-turvy | Babel Free

Definitions

1. An act of turning something backwards or upside down, or the situation that something is in after this has happened.
   countable
2. A situation where the natural order of things has been upset.
   countable, figuratively
3. Chaos, confusion, disorder.
   figuratively, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“Perhaps he was at a loss for the points of compass, as is often the case in tumbles and topsy-turvies.”

“[I ...] has seed a heap of scatterments and topsyturvies: here's hoping dat you all may swim smoofly along the briny waves of sacrificin' time, and ford the Jordan of destructive equinoxes, while fiery billows roll beneath!”

“The best-known examples of children’s nonsense language play, and their ‘topsy turvies’, or inversion of reality, are in Chukovsky, who asserts that such topsy turvies ‘strengthen (not weaken) the child’s awareness of reality’ [...].”

“Why should we [...] use it [our sense of the ludicrous] to degrade the healthy appetites and affections of our nature as they are seen to be degraded in insane patients whose system, all out of joint, finds matter for screaming laughter in mere topsy-turvy, [...?]”

CEFR level