upheaval

Other forms of upheaval

plural

upheavals·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about upheaval

What does upheaval mean?

upheaval means "a state of violent disturbance and disorder (as in politics or social conditions generally)". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in upheaval?

upheaval has 3 syllables: u-phea-val. The stress falls on "phea". In IPA it is /əpˈhivəl/.

What is another word for upheaval?

Close synonyms include turbulence, Sturm und Drang, convulsion, turmoil, uplift. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is upheaval a common word?

upheaval is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.