颠倒
diān dǎo · HSK 7
to turn upside down
🙃 diān dǎo sounds like DING! DOWN — ding, everything falls down and flips over
颠 (top/summit) + 倒 (fall/invert) = the top falls over, so everything ends up reversed or upside down. When things go DING and tumble DOWN, order turns to confusion.
倒 — person radical 亻 + 到 (to arrive)
倒 is a semantic-phonetic compound: the person radical 亻 gives meaning (an action done by/to a person), while 到 supplies the sound 'dào'. Originally meaning 'to fall over' (a person toppling), it extended to 'invert, upside down, pour out', as when something falls and spills.