Word.ws English Dictionary

upper hands

upper hands is the plural of upper hand.

Meaning of upper hand

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
  2. (obsolete, usually) The place of honour accorded to a social superior when walking together; the right of way in walking

Questions about upper hands

What is upper hands the plural of?
Upper hands is the plural of upper hand.

Words near upper hands in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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