Word.ws English Dictionary

top-shelf

top-shelf is the alternative form of top shelf.

Meaning of top shelf

Adjective

top shelf (not comparable)

  1. (US, idiomatic) Best, or high quality.
    • I bought a bottle of top shelf whiskey.
  2. (UK, idiomatic) Describing books, magazines, or movies that have adult content or softcore pornography.
    • Most of the band used to buy Autotrader to read on the various bus and plane journeys, but Barry would always turn up with a copy of Underwear Unlimited or some other seedy little top-shelf mag.2008, Rick Wakeman, Martin Roach, Grumpy Old Rock Star, →ISBN, page 83

See all 3 meanings of top shelf

Questions about top-shelf

What is top-shelf the alternative form of?
Top-shelf is the alternative form of top shelf.

Words near top-shelf in the dictionary

  1. top-rung
  2. top-sawyer
  3. top-secret
  4. top-selling
  5. top-shaped
  6. top-shelf
  7. top-slicing
  8. top-spinner
  9. top-spinners
  10. top-tick
  11. top-ticked

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: top-shelf (page history and authors); top shelf (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: “top-shelf.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/top-shelf. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.