One-up

"One-up" in a Sentence (3 examples)

If the real purpose of all the uproar about sweatshop labor in the Third World is to allow college students and professors to feel morally one-up on businesses that are providing much-needed jobs in poor countries, then it accomplishes that purpose.

If you're constantly trying to one-up others, you'll only end up harming yourself.

Labour has tried to one-up the Tories on cruelty to trans people, yet it has not benefited them even a smidgen in the polls.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.