one-upmanship
/wənˈəpmənˌʃɪp/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 1.91 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The art or practice of successively outdoing a competitor.
noun
A succession of instances of outdoing a competitor.
Example Sentences
- "They are focused on one-upmanship, which is the essence of a competitive spirit."
- "[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."
- "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."
- "I think all readers will be impressed by the manner in which Marwick places his own analysis in relation to previous studies both of sorcery and of conflict in general. His punctiliousness here contrasts sharply with the practice of some anthropologists who, in a contest of one-upmanship, score points either by ignoring earlier work or even by baldly asserting that it was all wrong."
- "Even these debates rarely constituted an exchange of ideas; they more resembled a contest of sectional champions, or a game of righteous, intellectual, and regional one-upsmanship."
Etymology
Word Breakdown
- Suffix: one up
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /wənˈəpmənˌʃɪp/
- British English: /(ˌ)wʌnˈʌpmənʃɪp/