Now they find themselves in a dangerous game of name-calling and one-upmanship.
Source: tatoeba (6386947)
One-upmanship
//(ˌ)wʌnˈʌpmənʃɪp//
Synonyms for "one-upmanship" (41 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (9)
Strong matches (12)
Related words (20)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
More general
2 entriesRelated terms
5 entriesderived
1 entriesTranslations
12 translations across 6 languages.
Czech
2 entries- přečurávaní noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
- snaha prosadit se na úkor ostatních noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
French
2 entries- course à l'échalote noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
- surenchère noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
Galician
2 entries- emulación noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
- rivalidade noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
Hungarian
4 entries- felülkerekedni akarás noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
- kivagyiság noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
- törtetés noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
- versengés noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
Polish
1 entries- przewyższenie konkurencji noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
Swedish
1 entries- konsten att platta till noun (art or practice of outdoing an opponent)
Sample sentences
6 total sentences available.
They are focused on one-upmanship, which is the essence of a competitive spirit.
Source: wiktionary
[V]arious emirates wanted their own ‘international’ airport, then an ‘international’ harbour, then cement factories, then container ports, then petro-chemical plants, then skyscraper hotels and, most recently, ‘international’ trade centres. […] The impetus for these projects continues to be ‘one-upmanship’ and inter-emirate competition for commercial pre-eminence and regional prestige. […] Outsiders, anxious to win lucrative contracts, have consistently taken advantage of these features of competitive one-upmanship among the UAE member states.
Source: wiktionary
Rather than indulge in historical oneupmanship – who knows, maybe the scratchings around the cave paintings were the first primitive hypertext links? – we will begin our brief overview of the history of hypertext in the same era as the birth of the technology which supports it.
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 6 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.