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Upper hand   /ˈəpər hænd/   Listen
adjective
Upper  adj. compar.  (compar. of Up) Being further up, literally or figuratively; higher in place, position, rank, dignity, or the like; superior; as, the upper lip; the upper side of a thing; the upper house of a legislature.
The upper hand, the superiority; the advantage. See To have the upper hand, under Hand.
Upper Bench (Eng. Hist.), the name of the highest court of common law (formerly King's Bench) during the Commonwealth.
Upper case, the top one of a pair of compositor's cases. See the Note under 1st Case, n., 3.
Upper covert (Zool.), one of the coverts situated above the bases of the tail quills.
Upper deck (Naut.), the topmost deck of any vessel; the spar deck.
Upper leather, the leather for the vamps and quarters of shoes.
Upper strake (Naut.), the strake next to the deck, usually of hard wood, and heavier than the other strakes.
Upper ten thousand, or (abbreviated) Upper ten, the ten thousand, more or less, who are highest in position or wealth; the upper class; the aristocracy. (Colloq.)
Upper topsail (Naut.), the upper half of a double topsail.
Upper works (Naut.), all those parts of the hull of a vessel that are properly above water.
Upper world.
(a)
The atmosphere.
(b)
Heaven.
(c)
This world; the earth; in distinction from the underworld.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Upper hand" Quotes from Famous Books



... Well-born women, their husbands' equals, feel the impulse to annoy them, to mark the points of their tolerance, like points at billiards, by some stinging word, partly in the spirit of diabolical malice, and to secure the upper hand or the right of turning ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... blackberry since the man died from us that had pleasantness on the top of his fingers. His two grey eyes were like the dew of the morning that lies on the grass. And since he was laid in the grave, the cold is getting the upper hand. ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... Mast, let his dangers be never so great and Death and damnation never so near, he will not be awaked out of his sleep. So that if a man have any respect either to Credit, Health, Life or Salvation, he will not be a drunken man. But the truth is, where this sin gets the upper hand, men are, as I said before, so intoxicated and bewitched with the seeming pleasures, and sweetness thereof; that they have neither heart nor mind to think of that which is better in itself; and would, if ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... faces which, in mould of feature, in mildness of expression, and still more in the cut of hair and beard, bear so marked a likeness to the conventional Christ-portrait: this neighbour looked on with only a languid interest, which seemed unable to get the upper hand of melancholy thoughts. Maurice, who believed his feelings shared by all about him, was chilled by such indifference: he only learned later, after they had become friends, that nothing roused in Boehmer a real ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... Commonwealth, when forms of prayer were altogether discarded. It appears, however, from Fuller, that in his time, the observance of the day was very much neglected. "If this plot," says he, "had taken effect, the papists would have celebrated this day with all solemnity; and it would have taken the upper hand of all other festivals. The more, therefore, the shame and pity, that amongst Protestants the keeping of this day (not yet full fifty years old) begins already to wax weak and decay; so that the red letters, wherever it is written, seem to grow dimmer and ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury


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