Word.ws English Dictionary

one up

one up verb: to outdo, to perform something slightly better than a competitor's prior effort. Also the alternative spelling of 1-up.

Verb

one up (third-person singular simple present one ups, present participle one upping, simple past and past participle one upped)

  1. (idiomatic) To outdo, to perform something slightly better than a competitor's prior effort.
    • Every year the neighbors try to one-up each other with their holiday lights.

Noun

one up (plural one ups)

  1. (especially) An advantage over someone.
    • WePay wants to get one-up in the mobile payments race with its new iOS app for small businesses.

Also used as

one up is also the alternative spelling of 1-up.

Forms of one up

Verb
third-person singular presentone ups
present participleone upping
past participleone upped
pastone upped
alternative formone-up
Noun
pluralone ups

Words formed from one up

Questions about one up

What does one up mean?
One up means to outdo, to perform something slightly better than a competitor's prior effort.
What part of speech is one up?
One up can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of one up?
The past tense of one up is one upped.

Words near one up in the dictionary

  1. one true brace style
  2. one turn kill
  3. one turn kills
  4. one under
  5. one unders
  6. one up
  7. one upped
  8. one upping
  9. one ups
  10. one way
  11. one way or another

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: one up (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.

Last updated:

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

Cite this entry: “one up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/one_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.