Word.ws English Dictionary

upper hand

upper hand noun: advantage or control.

Noun

the upper hand (usually uncountable, plural upper hands)

  1. (idiomatic, usually) Advantage or control.
    • There was no refusing him, for he had got the complete upper hand of the community, and the peaceful burghers all stood in awe of him.1855, Washington Irving, Guests from Gibbet Island
    • [C]uriosity began to get the upper hand, and I determined I should have one look through the cabin window.1883, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 23, in Treasure Island
  2. (obsolete, usually) The place of honour accorded to a social superior when walking together; the right of way in walking

upper hand meaning in Urdu and Arabic

upper hand in Urdu

بالا دستی, قابو

upper hand in Arabic

advantage
اَلْيَدُ الْعُلْيَا al-yadu l-ʕulyā

Examples of upper hand in a sentence

  • There it was Razumov who had the upper hand, in a composed sense of his own superiority.1911, Joseph Conrad, chapter 1, in Under Western Eyes:
  • And because they live everywhere and reproduce quickly, bacteria have the upper hand.2003 February 14, Christine Gorman, “Playing Chicken With Our Antibiotics”, in Time:
  • That's quite some claim for a line where floods have often had the upper hand in the past 16 years, causing track bed and embankments to be rebuilt.2020 August 26, Andrew Mourant, “Reinforced against future flooding”, in Rail, page 61:

Forms of upper hand

pluralupper hands

Origin of upper hand

From Middle English over hond, from Old English ofer- + hand (superior control; superior position). Not, as supposed, from a card game or counting-out game.

Questions about upper hand

What does upper hand mean?
Upper hand means advantage or control.
What is upper hand in Urdu?
Upper hand in Urdu is بالا دستی, قابو. See Upper hand meaning in Urdu.
How do you use upper hand in a sentence?
There it was Razumov who had the upper hand, in a composed sense of his own superiority.
What part of speech is upper hand?
Upper hand is a noun.
What is the plural of upper hand?
The plural of upper hand is upper hands.

Words near upper hand in the dictionary

  1. Upper German
  2. Upper Growee
  3. Upper Gullies
  4. Upper Gundowring
  5. Upper Halliford
  6. upper hand
  7. upper hands
  8. Upper Heyford
  9. Upper Hill
  10. Upper Holloway
  11. Upper Horseshoe Creek

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: upper hand (page history and authors); upper hand (Urdu Wiktionary) (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-upper hand.ogg.

Cite this entry: “upper hand.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/upper_hand. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.