arsy versy | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic,British,vulgar)Tumbling upside down;head over heels; backwards.1548,Nicholas Udall(translator),The Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the Newe Testamente,London: Edward Whitchurch, Volume 1,Luke16,[1]Who would not haue iudged that same ryche man to haue been a perfecte exaumple and paterne of most welthie and happy state: and this pooreLazareman to be a paterne of vtter miserie? But felicitie is in nowyse to be measured by such thinges as fortune geueth to men in this lyfe. But in the matter that we nowe speake of, altogether was sodainly turned in and out clenearsie versy.1612, Benvenuto,The Passenger of Benvenuto:Dost thou not know that from the beginning the world goesarsie-versie.1587,Raphael Holinshedet al., “The Description of Ireland”, inChronicles of England, Scotlande and Irelande‎[2], page26:[…]the estate of that flourishing towne was turnedarsie versie, topside the otherwaie, and from abundance of prosperitie quite exchanged to extreame penurie.1975,Saul Bellow,Humboldt’s Gift‎[3], New York: Viking, page457:“You put your back up in the wrong place and you’re passive in the wrong place. You’ve got everythingarsy-versy.[…]”1989,Julian Barnes, chapter 8, inA History of the World in 10½ Chapters‎[4], New York: Knopf, page194:Us going in on foot and then the equipment being airlifted in is about asarsy-versyas you can get.

Examples:

No examples available.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).