Word.ws English Dictionary

upshift

upshift noun: a shift to a higher gear.

Noun

upshift (plural upshifts)

  1. A shift to a higher gear.
    • For example, the vehicle starts off in second gear or an upshift takes place at lower engine speeds.1999, Kurt Neuffer, Kurt Engelsdorf, “Transmission Control”, in Ronald K. Jurgen, editor, Automotive Electronics Handbook, page 323
    Antonyms:
    downshift
  2. A shift to a higher level, such as of frequency, growth, economic level, etc.
    Antonyms:
    downshift

Verb

upshift (third-person singular simple present upshifts, present participle upshifting, simple past and past participle upshifted)

  1. To shift to a higher gear.
    • You can upshift to second gear once the car is moving.
    Antonyms:
    downshift
  2. (transitive) To shift to a higher level, such as of frequency, growth rate, economic level, etc.
    • The frequency of the light is upshifted.
    • That's how you upshift a conversation so you can navigate the great political divide in a way that insights, not incites.2010, Meryl Runion, How To Restore Sanity To Our Political Conversations, page 113
    Antonyms:
    downshift

Antonyms of upshift

Forms of upshift

Noun
pluralupshifts
Verb
third-person singular presentupshifts
present participleupshifting
past participleupshifted
pastupshifted

Origin of upshift

From Middle English upshiften, upschyften (“to raise”), equivalent to up- + shift.

Words formed from upshift

Questions about upshift

What does upshift mean?
Upshift means a shift to a higher gear.
What part of speech is upshift?
Upshift can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of upshift?
The plural of upshift is upshifts.

Words near upshift in the dictionary

  1. upsey
  2. Upshaw
  3. Upshaw-Schulman syndrome
  4. Upshaws
  5. upsherin
  6. upshift
  7. upshifted
  8. upshifter
  9. upshifters
  10. upshifting
  11. upshifts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: upshift (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-upshift.wav.

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