English edit

Etymology edit

From French interversion.

Noun edit

interversion (countable and uncountable, plural interversions)

  1. (rare, obsolete) Embezzlement.
  2. The swapping of positions within a sequence; transposition or permutation.
    • 1956, Marius Hendrikus van der Valk, Conservatism in Modern Chinese Family Law, page 41:
      Interversion of the order between wife, concubine and slave girl was always to be feared, and appropriate provisions appeared in the T'ang code and its successors.
    • 2010, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Sarah Stewart, Birth of the Persian Empire, →ISBN:
      Thanks to the conservatism of local toponymy, the first five rivers (Khvāstrā, Hvaspā, Fradathā, Khvarenahvaitī, Ushtavaitī) are safely identified as northeastern and northern tributaries of the lake, enumerated in anticlockwise order (merely with interversion of the last two).
    • 2013, H. Lammens, Islam: Beliefs and Institutions, →ISBN, page 123:
      We find ourselves once more in the presence of the phenomenon shath, the interversion of personalities occurring in the course of mystical union. God concedes His part to the ecstatic soul which becomes His mouthpiece; the latter can do no other than speak in the first person, or rather it is God speaking, as it were, by his mouth.
  3. (music) A composition technique in which a sequence of elements composed of notes or rhythms is repeated in permuted orders.
    • 1963, Alan Walker, A Study in Musical Analysis, page 74:
      Reti's explanation that interversion is sometimes responsible for thematic unity, while without academic precedent, is based upon an acute perception of musical structure.
    • 2008, Siglind Bruhn, Messiaen's Interpretations of Holiness and Trinity, →ISBN:
      Repeated permutation according to this reading order, which Messiaen explores in full in "Île de Feu," results in ten different interversions (as the last column in the table shows, the tenth interversion restores the chromatic pitches in their order from 1 to 12).
    • 2014, Kim Stanley Robinson, The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance, →ISBN:
      But the two are not just related. They are the same! Inversion, retrogradation, retrograe, inversion, augmentation, diminution, partition, interversion, exclusion, inclusion, and textural change -- these composing operations are the very ones described by Holywelkin's equations!
    • 2016, Gareth Healey, Messiaen's Musical Techniques: The Composer's View and Beyond, →ISBN:
      Theree is a clear distinction between the type of interversion utilised in the 'Experimental period' (1949-51) and the compositions of the early 1960s.
  4. (law) The process of changing a subsidiary title, such as that of a tenant, to one that is independently held.
    • 1862, The American Law Register - Volume 10, page 68:
      Interversion is effected by a conveyance from the owner of land to his tenant, who thereafter will hold in virtue of the extrinsic cause contemplated by the rule, and also when the land comes to the tenant by descent.
    • 1865, Code civil du Bas Canada, page 419:
      Acts of interversion cannot take place against minors or other persons against whom prescription is not allowed to run.
    • 2000, Lars Peter Wunibald van Vliet, Transfer of Movables in German, French, English and Dutch Law:
      In modern Dutch law the prohibition of interversion is still used to prevent a prescription period from running against an unsuspecting owner.

Related terms edit

References edit

French edit

Etymology edit

From intervertir +‎ -ion.

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /ɛ̃.tɛʁ.vɛʁ.sjɔ̃/
  • (file)

Noun edit

interversion f (plural interversions)

  1. swapping; inversion; reversal
    Synonym: permutation
  2. transposition (of letters)
    Synonym: permutation
  3. (phonology, rare) metathesis
    Synonym: métathèse

Further reading edit