Word.ws English Dictionary

on one's uppers

on one's uppers prepositional phrase: destitute; poor.

Prepositional phrase

  1. destitute; poor.
    • “We are bound toward the scuppers,
      And the time has come to act,
      Or we’ll both be on our uppers
      For a fact!”1902, Guy Wetmore Carryl, How a Cat Was Annoyed and a Poet Was Booted

Synonyms of on one's uppers

Origin of on one's uppers

From uppers (“the top part of a leather shoe”), having worn through the sole.

Questions about on one's uppers

What does on one's uppers mean?
On one's uppers means destitute; poor.
What part of speech is on one's uppers?
On one's uppers is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on one's uppers in the dictionary

  1. on one's Ps
  2. on one's side
  3. on one's tod
  4. on one's todd
  5. on one's toes
  6. on one's uppers
  7. on one's watch
  8. on one's way
  9. on ones
  10. on opposite sides of the barricades
  11. on or about

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on one's uppers (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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