topsyturvydom

See also: topsy-turvydom

English

Alternative forms

• topsy-turvydom

Etymology

From topsyturvy +‎ -dom.

Noun

topsyturvydom (countable and uncountable, plural topsyturvydoms)

1. A state of affairs, or a region in which everything is topsyturvy
   • 1899, Literary News, volumes 20-21:

     But the young wife has not altogether an enviable position, for by one of those queer topsyturvydoms which occur in Japan, the mother-in-law—who, in the West, is so often the object of cheap satire—is a veritable terror in the Far East to the wife.

   • 1902, William Butler Yeats, The Celtic Twilight:

     At last she saw a big river, and the man who had tried to keep her from being carried off was drifting down it — such are the topsyturvydoms of faery glamour — in a cockleshell.

   • 1995, The Force of Vision: Dramas of desire; Visions of beauty:

     In traditions of both East and West, however, wanderlust for topsyturvydom seems to represent an alternative view of the nature of things, and it seems to embody a liberating escape from the status quo.

   • 2002, Paul Oppenheimer, Rubens: A Portrait:

     [...] that it would make an oblique reference to the topsyturvydom of his own life as a child in exile in Cologne, and to the appalling topsyturvydom especially of his father's life, that of the former Alderman of Antwerp, who had died there as an exile.

   • 2014, Janko Lavrin, Tolstoy: An Approach bound with Dostoevsky: A Study:

     There was a topsy-turvydom of values, of trends and ideas—a continually changing stream which Dostoevsky began to explore, not only in its temporary aspects,but also sub specie aeternitatis.

   • 2015, Stephen Wade, A Victorian Somebody: The Life of George Grossmith:

     That has to be the best review George ever had. Not all critics grasped the nature of this new opera genre, somewhere between burlesque and satire, with a 'topsy-turvydom' so prominent in Gilbert's view of the world.