Invert

Invert (pronounced in-vurt)

(1) To turn upside down.

(2) To reverse in position, order, direction, or relationship.

(3) To turn or change to the opposite or contrary, as in nature, bearing, or effect; to turn something inward or back upon itself; to turn inside out.

(4) In chemistry, to a subject a substance to a reaction in which a starting material of one optical configuration forms a product of the opposite configuration; subjected to a reaction in which a starting material of one optical configuration forms a product of the opposite configuration.

(5) In music, to subject to musical inversion, the transposition between the upper voice part and the lower (to move the root note of a chord up or down an octave, resulting in a change in pitch).

(6) In phonetics, to articulate as a retroflex vowel; to turn the tip of the tongue up and back.

(7) In formal logic, to form the inverse of a categorical proposition.

(8) In psychology & psychiatry, a person who adopts the role of the opposite sex (historically used in clinical practice and law enforcement as an alternative word for homosexual.

(9) In civil engineering (particularly hydrology), the lower inner surface of a drain or sewer; the lowest point inside a pipe at a certain point.

(10) In Architecture, an arch that is concave upwards, especially one used in foundation work; the base of a tunnel on which the road or railway may be laid and used when construction is through unstable ground (and may be flat or form a continuous curve with the tunnel arch).

(11) A sometimes used synonym for divert in certain contexts; to convert to an incorrect use.

(12) In anatomy, to turn the foot inwards.

(13) In biochemistry, as invertasome, a nucleoprotein complex that causes inversion of a DNA sequence.

(14) In skateboarding, a technique in which the skater grabs the board and plants a hand on the coping so as to balance upside-down on the lip of a ramp.

(15) In zoology, an informal term for an invertebrate.

1525–1535: From the Middle French invertir, from the Latin invertere (to turn upside down or inside out), the construct being in- (in) + vertere (to turn), an inflection of vertō (I turn; I change; I reverse), from the Proto-Italic wertō, from the primitive Indo-European wértti from the root wer- (to turn; to bend).  It was cognate with the Sanskrit वर्तते (vártate (to turn)), the Sanskrit वर्तयति (vartáyati (to turn)), the Avestan varət, the Proto-Slavic vьrtěti, the Old Church Slavonic врьтѣти (vrĭtěti (to turn around)), the Polish wiercić (to drill; to fidget), the Russian вертеть (vertetʹ (to rotate)), the Proto-Baltic wert-, the Lithuanian ver̃sti, the Persian گرد‎ (gard (grow; turn)), the Proto-Germanic werþaną (to become), the Old English weorþan (to happen), the English worth and the Old Irish dofortad (to pour out).  The prefix -in is quirky because it can act either to negate or intensify.  The general rule is that when pre-pended to a noun or adjective, it reinforces the quality signified and when pre-pended to an adjective, it negates the meaning, the latter mostly in words borrowed from French.  The Latin prefix in- was from the Proto-Italic en-, from the primitive Indo-European n̥- (not), the zero-grade form of the negative particle ne (not) and was akin to ne-, nē & nī.  In Modern English it is from the Middle English in-, from Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in, from the primitive Indo-European en.  In the Classical Latin, invertere had the literal sense of "turn upside down, turn about; upset, reverse, transpose" and was used figuratively to suggest "pervert, corrupt, misrepresent" while when used of words it implied "being used ironically". Invert, invertibility & inverting are nouns, verbs & adjectives, inversion, inversion & inverter are nouns, inverted is a verb & adjective, invertible & inversive are adjectives and invertedly is an adverb; the noun plural is inverts.

Pittsburgh Police arrest card #25747, from 1932 which circulated on the internet after being published in Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots (2006) by Mark Michaelson, Steven Kasher & Bob Nickas.  Some thought the “Crime” noted was “Invert” (and thus suggesting the offence was homosexuality) or the word was “Invest” what was police slang for “investigate”.  There appears to have been a typo and the correct letter could be either “v” or “s” but it seems most likely he was being investigated as a suspected communist.

Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing (1840-1902) was a German psychiatrist remembered for his seminal work Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study) (1886).  Fortunately for all, for most purposes he shortened his name to Richard von Krafft-Ebing and was recognized as perhaps the first acknowledged expert on matters of sexual deviance, his publications either creating or formalizing the diagnostic categories which would remain influential for decades and some of his work remains recognizable in the literature even today.  One of his terms was "sexual inversion" which he used to describe homosexuality and it appeared in the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published in 1952.  Dr von Krafft-Ebing had used sexual inversion as a purely descriptive term for homosexuality, reflecting the academic tone he adopted in the hope those other than in the professions of medicine or law would be discouraged from turning the pages.  Very much seriously minded, he didn’t write to satisfy prurient interest.  He did however definitely regard sexual inversion as deviant and in this sense it carried over to the DSM where it was listed as a mental disorder although the operation of the linguistic treadmill meant that when the DSM-II was issued in 1968, the term was replaced with “homosexuality”.  From then on, the profession moved in the last quarter of the twentieth century as legislative change would unfold in the Western world, sometimes moving ahead of the law, sometimes following.  When the fourth edition of the DSM-II was published in 1974, the APA tested the waters by introducing a sort of diagnostic ambivalence about the matter and with the coming of the DSM-III (1980), homosexuality ceased to be considered a mental disorder and was treated as just another variation in the human condition.

Lindsay Lohan contemplating the subliminal messaging of The McDonalds big “M”, McDonald's drive-thru, Santa Monica, California, December 2011.  The car is a Porsche Panamera.

A contemporary of Dr von Krafft-Ebing was of course the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), someone who thought much about the centrality of sex to the human condition and, famously, the role of mothers in its formation.  One admirer (though by no means an uncritical one) of Dr Freud was the Russian-born, US-based clinical psychologist Louis Cheskin (1907-1981) who systematized a process of analysis which tracked the relationship between the aesthetic elements (ie the packaging) of products with customers’ perceptions of the content; this he called “sensation transference”.  Some of his best known work was in colors, working out how people generally understood the messages conveyed by different hues and he applied his findings with great success to product wrappings, corporate logos and even the interior color schemes for department stores and restaurants.  According to him, a restaurant which wants its customers to linger might use blue while a fast-food outlet which wants a high turnover of it chairs and tables should favor orange or yellow.

A practical application of Freud via Cheskin: Charlotte McKinney’s (b 1993) famous advertisement for Carl's Jr. Restaurants LLC, Super Bowl XLIX, 2015.

Already famous from his work with the Ford Motor Company, notably for his collaborations with the company’s general manager Lee Iacocca (1924–2019) during which he conducted the research which contributed to the marketing campaigns for the wildly successful Mustang (1964) and Lincoln’s Continental Mark III (1968), Cheskin was retained as a consultant by McDonald’s, then in the throes of one of their periodic changes to the corporate logo.  At the time, McDonald’s management wanted to refocus the business and one aspect of this was to change the stylized “M” (the golden arches), then thought dated.  In this case Louis Cheskin followed Freud and wrote one of his persuasive papers which convinced the executives the big “M” was a asset because, as well as the obvious association with the McDonald’s name, there was also a culinary cum anatomical link: If the “M” was inverted, it summoned in the mind the nurturing image of a mother’s breasts, “subconsciously making hungry customers feel comforted and at home”.  Whether the chain’s slogan at the time (Give mum a night off) was influential in the decision to retain the (uninverted) “M” isn’t clear.”

Evolution of the big “M” since 1942 (left) and inverted (right).  One can see what Louis Cheskin was getting at.