Word.ws English Dictionary

put the bottom rail on top

put the bottom rail on top verb: to reverse a hierarchy.

Verb

put the bottom rail on top (third-person singular simple present puts the bottom rail on top, present participle putting the bottom rail on top, simple past and past participle put the bottom rail on top)

  1. (idiomatic) To reverse a hierarchy.
    • “The nigger Professor” they called me, “with a plan to educate the blacks and to put them above the whites”; “to put the bottom rail on top”; “to subvert Anglo‐Saxon civilization.”1906–1909, Walter Hines Page, The Southerner, a Novel, Doubleday, Page & Company, page 253

Forms of put the bottom rail on top

third-person singular presentputs the bottom rail on top
present participleputting the bottom rail on top
past participleput the bottom rail on top
pastput the bottom rail on top

Questions about put the bottom rail on top

What does put the bottom rail on top mean?
Put the bottom rail on top means to reverse a hierarchy.
What part of speech is put the bottom rail on top?
Put the bottom rail on top is a verb.
What is the past tense of put the bottom rail on top?
The past tense of put the bottom rail on top is put the bottom rail on top.

Words near put the bottom rail on top in the dictionary

  1. put the bee on
  2. put the beggar on the gentleman
  3. put the bite on
  4. put the blame on
  5. put the boot in
  6. put the bottom rail on top
  7. put the brakes on
  8. put the cabosh on
  9. put the cart before the horse
  10. put the case
  11. put the cat among the pigeons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put the bottom rail on top (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-put the bottom rail on top.ogg.

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