Our Living Language Inversion is the linguistic process in which the two parts of a compound word are reversed. In the dialects of the southern Appalachians and the Ozarks, inversion occurs in the indefinite pronouns ending in -ever (whichever, whatever, whoever), yielding everwhich, everwhat, and everwho. Everwhere is an example of inversion when it means "wherever" but illustrates elision of an unstressed syllable when it means "everywhere."