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Synonyms

upper hand

American  

noun

  1. the dominating or controlling position; advantage.

    to have the upper hand in the fight.
upper hand British  

noun

  1. the position of control; advantage (esp in the phrases have or get the upper hand )

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
upper hand Idioms  

  1. Also, whip hand. A dominating or controlling position, as in Once you let Jeff get the upper hand there'll be no stopping him, or When it comes to checkers, my son-in-law generally has the whip hand. The first term alludes to an ancient game in which each player in turn grasps a stick with one hand, beginning from the bottom, and the last who can put his hand at the top wins. Its figurative use dates from the late 1400s. The variant alludes to the driver who holds the whip in a horse-drawn vehicle; it was being used figuratively by the late 1600s.

Etymology

Origin of upper hand

First recorded in 1475–85

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

For industry insiders, "Sinners" may have the upper hand with SAG-AFTRA, which represents more than 160,000 members -- but that may not hold true in two weeks for the Academy Awards.

From Barron's

Street smarts may hold the upper hand for now.

From MarketWatch

A former official with the DoD, who asked not to be named, told the BBC that Anthropic appeared to have the upper hand in the fight.

From BBC

No AI magic trick is quite as impressive as the one it’s doing in financial markets—giving some utilities an upper hand with tech giants that are 100 times their size.

From Barron's

Paramount has attempted numerous maneuvers to gain the upper hand.

From Los Angeles Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.