Word.ws English Dictionary

up-line

up-line is the alternative spelling of up line.

Meaning of up line

Noun

up line (plural up lines)

  1. A railway line on which trains travel towards a major terminus.
    • The down line was cleared about midnight, or nine hours after the accident, but the up line was not in a state to admit of the traffic being resumed until one o'clock on the next day.1857 Alan J Day, Verena Hoffman - The Annual Register of World Events
  2. (attributive, often) A member of a multi-level marketing scheme who has recruited others (their down line) and receives a portion of their earnings.
    • Many uplines convince their distributors to develop an "us vs. them" attitude that is completely unfounded in reality.1998, Charles F. Amick, Network Marketing: How to Play by Your Own Rules and Win, page 48

Adjective

up-line (not comparable)

  1. Describing a higher level in a hierarchical management structure
    • These managers then discuss their decisions with other first-line managers and managers at the next level — the up-line managers — to ensure the assessments and justifications are consistent across groups.2005 Human Capital: Symposium on Designing & Managing Market-Based & More Performance-Oriented Pay

Forms of up-line

pluralup-lines

Questions about up-line

What does up-line mean?
Up-line means describing a higher level in a hierarchical management structure.
What is up-line the alternative spelling of?
Up-line is the alternative spelling of up line.
What part of speech is up-line?
Up-line is an adjective.

Words near up-line in the dictionary

  1. up-gunned
  2. up-gunning
  3. up-guns
  4. up-handed
  5. up-jumped
  6. up-line
  7. up-lines
  8. up-minded
  9. up-or-out
  10. up-over
  11. up-plow

Source and license

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