Definition of Reverse

Reverse

Turned backward; having a contrary or opposite direction; hence; opposite or contrary in kind; as, the reverse order or method.

Turned upside down; greatly disturbed.

Reversed; as, a reverse shell.

That which appears or is presented when anything, as a lance, a line, a course of conduct, etc., is reverted or turned contrary to its natural direction.

That which is directly opposite or contrary to something else; a contrary; an opposite.

The act of reversing; complete change; reversal; hence, total change in circumstances or character; especially, a change from better to worse; misfortune; a check or defeat; as, the enemy met with a reverse.

The back side; as, the reverse of a drum or trench; the reverse of a medal or coin, that is, the side opposite to the obverse. See Obverse.

A thrust in fencing made with a backward turn of the hand; a backhanded stroke.

A turn or fold made in bandaging, by which the direction of the bandage is changed.

To turn back; to cause to face in a contrary direction; to cause to depart.

To cause to return; to recall.

To change totally; to alter to the opposite.

To turn upside down; to invert.

Hence, to overthrow; to subvert.

To overthrow by a contrary decision; to make void; to under or annual for error; as, to reverse a judgment, sentence, or decree.

To return; to revert.

To become or be reversed.

Related Definitions:

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Reverse Quotations

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.
Abraham Lincoln

When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.
Pablo Picasso

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
J. D. Salinger

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
Arthur Schopenhauer

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.
Robert A. Heinlein

Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.
John Stuart Mill

The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.
P. J. O'Rourke

I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear.
Tony Blair

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?
Jack London

A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.
Mikhail Bakunin

Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing.
Ben Hogan

Without solid connections between homicides, we may have the reverse problem of believing three local murders are the work of one serial killer when they may actually be the work of three!
Pat Brown

Don't be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it.
Donald Rumsfeld

I try to lie as much as I can when I'm interviewed. It's reverse psychology. I figure if you lie, they'll print the truth.
River Phoenix

A good engineer thinks in reverse and asks himself about the stylistic consequences of the components and systems he proposes.
Helmut Jahn

Ask a woman's advice, and whatever she advises, Do the very reverse and you're sure to be wise.
Thomas More

I always read that men don't like intelligent girls, but I've always found the reverse.
Mary Wesley

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.
Charles Caleb Colton

The family only represents one aspect, however important an aspect, of a human being's functions and activities. A life is beautiful and ideal or the reverse, only when we have taken into our consideration the social as well as the family relationship.
Havelock Ellis

Meanwhile the fact that the connection with the activity of memory in ordinary life is for the moment lost is of less importance than the reverse, namely, that this connection with the complications and fluctuations of life is necessarily still a too close one.
Hermann Ebbinghaus

I was the only white kid in my neighborhood for most of my youth even in high school, so reverse racism was just as apparent as racism.
Shia LaBeouf

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

When running to fill a time quota, however, the reverse happens. You can't make that time pass any faster by rushing, so you settle into a pace that feels right to you at the moment. Each minute above a quota is a little victory.
Joe Henderson

You look at the tremendous success of Facebook. To my mind there is not a lot of commerce going on in these social networking sites. eBay is a community anchored in commerce. It is a commerce site that built a community around it. What has not been proven is if the reverse can happen and people will go to community sites to do commerce.
Meg Whitman

To do what we are doing in this budget to our children, cutting their health care funds, decreasing opportunity, simply so we can pay for tax cuts and a war in Iraq is beyond belief, and we need to reverse it.
Tom Allen

I am concerned about how to reverse the process by which a fundamentalist right and a corporate elite were able to seize power in the United States.
Todd Gitlin

If something is successful with the audience, it's automatically suspect; the reverse is to say that not to reach audiences is the greatest compliment an artist can receive!
Carlisle Floyd

By a series of violent shocks, the nations in succession have struggled to shake off the Past, to reverse the action of Time and the verdict of success, and to rescue the world from the reign of the dead.
John Acton

This system of encouragement proves serviceable as a preventive of punishment, the attainment of the tickets being a reward, the forfeiture of them the reverse; and, as such, boys seem often more affected by their loss than by coercion.
Joseph Lancaster

Al Gore is not just whistling in the wind. Global warming is for real. Every scientist knows that now, and we are on our way to the destruction of every species on earth, if we don't pay attention and reverse our course.
Theodore C. Sorensen

More Reverse Quotations

Reverse Translations

reverse in Afrikaans is teenoorgesteld
reverse in Dutch is achterzijde, ommezijde, rugstuk
reverse in Finnish is vastakkainen
reverse in French is verso, inverse
reverse in Portuguese is reverso

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