Word of the Day Archive
Monday October 1, 2007
bouleversement \bool-vair-suh-MAWN\ , noun:
Complete overthrow; a reversal; a turning upside down.
For the second time in his life Amory had had a complete bouleversement and was hurrying into line with his generation.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Ian Salisbury had his chance yesterday but he tried too hard to give the ball a rip on the dry surface and the old tendency to drop short or overpitch cost 34 from eight overs either side of tea as Rhodes and McMillan threatened a bouleversement worthy of the famous England deliverance against Australia in 1981.
-- Christopher Martin-Jenkins, "Gough takes England to brink", Daily Telegraph, August 10, 1998
It requires a complete bouleversement in your whole attitude, a process of adjustment that anyone who's been in this position understands; but you need to go through it.
-- "Two years' hard Labour", Independent, July 13, 1996
Bouleversement comes from French, from Old French bouleverser, "to overturn," from boule, "ball" (from Latin bulla) + verser, "to overturn" (from Latin versare, from vertere, "to turn").
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for bouleversement
