Word.ws English Dictionary

one upping

one upping is the present participle and gerund of one up.

Meaning of one 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.

See all 2 meanings of one up

Questions about one upping

What is one upping the present participle and gerund of?
One upping is the present participle and gerund of one up.

Words near one upping in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: one upping (page history and authors); 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.

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