change to opposite
1 [VN] to change sth completely so that it is the opposite of what it was before:
to reverse a procedure / process / trend * The government has failed to reverse the economic decline. * It is sometimes possible to arrest or reverse the disease.
2 [VN] to change a previous decision, law, etc. to the opposite one:
The Court of Appeal reversed the decision. * The policy is likely to be reversed if there is a change of government. * to reverse a judgement
3 [VN] to turn sth the opposite way around or change the order of sth around:
Writing is reversed in a mirror. * You should reverse the order of these pages.
exchange two things
4 [VN] to exchange the positions or functions of two things:
It felt as if we had reversed our roles of parent and child. * She used to work for me, but our situations are now reversed.
yourself
5 [VN] ~ yourself (on sth) (AmE) to admit you were wrong or to stop having a particular position in an argument:
He has reversed himself on a dozen issues.
vehicle
6 (especially BrE) when a vehicle or its driver reverses or the driver reverses a vehicle, the vehicle goes backwards:
[VN] Now reverse the car. * [V] He reversed around the corner. * She reversed into a parking space. * Caution! This truck is reversing.
compareBACKv.
telephone call
7 [VN] ~ (the) charges (BrE) to make a telephone call that will be paid for by the person you are calling, not by you:
a reverse charges call
seealsoCOLLECTadj.
Part of speech: noun
opposite
1 (the reverse) [sing.] the opposite of what has just been mentioned:
This problem is the reverse of the previous one. * Although I expected to enjoy living in the country, in fact the reverse is true. * In the south, the reverse applies. * It wasn't easy to persuade her to come-quite the reverse.
back
2 (the reverse) [sing.] the back of a coin, piece of material, piece of paper, etc:
The coin has the queen's head stamped on the reverse.
in vehicle
3 (also reverse gear) [U] the mechanism used to make a vehicle move backwards:
Put the car in / into reverse.
loss / defeat
4 [C] (formal) a loss or defeat; a change from success to failure:
Property values have suffered another reverse. * a damaging political reverse
IDIOMS
in reverse in the opposite order or way
SYNBACKWARDS:
The secret number is my phone number in reverse. * We did a similar trip to you, but in reverse.
go / put sth into reverse to start to happen or to make sth happen in the opposite way:
In the 1980s economic growth went into reverse. * Various problems have put the company's expansion plans into reverse.
adjective [onlybeforenoun]
opposite
1 opposite to what has been mentioned:
to travel in the reverse direction * The winners were announced in reverse order (= the person in the lowest place was announced first). * The experiment had the reverse effect to what was intended.
back
2 opposite to the front:
Iron the garment on the reverse side.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for reverse is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is reverse a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, reverse is tagged as verb.
Does reverse appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — reverse appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
