Word.ws English Dictionary

up one's sleeve

up one's sleeve prepositional phrase: hidden and ready to be produced as needed; in reserve.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Hidden and ready to be produced as needed; in reserve.
    • I have tried everything I can think of, and I don't have anything more up my sleeve.
    • "There may be things that you know which I do not. I have not pretended to be aware of all the details of your show. But equally I've got something up my sleeve that you don't know about. And that's where I mean to score. Danvers was a damned clever fellow——" He broke off as if he had said too much.1922, Agatha Christie, “Chapter 16”, in The Secret Adversary

Forms of up one's sleeve

alternative formup one's sleeves

Origin of up one's sleeve

From the practice of magicians hiding tricks or gimmicks in the sleeve.

Questions about up one's sleeve

What does up one's sleeve mean?
Up one's sleeve means hidden and ready to be produced as needed; in reserve.
What part of speech is up one's sleeve?
Up one's sleeve is a prepositional phrase.

Words near up one's sleeve in the dictionary

  1. up north
  2. up on
  3. up on one's ear
  4. up one's game
  5. up one's own ass
  6. up one's sleeve
  7. up one's sleeves
  8. up oneself
  9. up or out
  10. up poo creek
  11. up quark

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: up one's sleeve (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-up one's sleeve.ogg.

Cite this entry: “up one's sleeve.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/up_one%27s_sleeve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.