Word.ws English Dictionary

kick upstairs

kick upstairs verb: to promote (an employee) to a position of lesser influence, but of apparently higher status.

Verb

kick upstairs (third-person singular simple present kicks upstairs, present participle kicking upstairs, simple past and past participle kicked upstairs)

  1. (idiomatic, informal, transitive) To promote (an employee) to a position of lesser influence, but of apparently higher status.
    Synonyms:
    boot upstairs

Synonyms of kick upstairs

Forms of kick upstairs

third-person singular presentkicks upstairs
present participlekicking upstairs
past participlekicked upstairs
pastkicked upstairs

Questions about kick upstairs

What does kick upstairs mean?
Kick upstairs means to promote (an employee) to a position of lesser influence, but of apparently higher status.
What part of speech is kick upstairs?
Kick upstairs is a verb.
What is the past tense of kick upstairs?
The past tense of kick upstairs is kicked upstairs.

Words near kick upstairs in the dictionary

  1. kick up the ass
  2. kick up the backside
  3. kick up the bottom
  4. kick up the bum
  5. kick up the butt
  6. kick upstairs
  7. kick volleyball
  8. kick wax
  9. kick waxes
  10. kick wheel
  11. kick wheels

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kick upstairs (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-kick upstairs.ogg.

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