upstairs
Syllables: up·stairsUK/ˌʌpˈstɛəz//ˌʌpˈstɛɹz/
upstairs adjective: located on a higher floor or level of a building.
Adjective
upstairs (comparative further upstairs or farther upstairs, superlative furthest upstairs or farthest upstairs)
- Located on a higher floor or level of a building.
- We rent out the upstairs bedroom to a student.
- Pertaining to a pitched ball that is high, and usually outside the strike zone.
- That fastball was upstairs for a ball.
- Originating in or associated with a higher matrix clause, as opposed to a lower embedded clause.
- Weaker (tolerant) quantificational values (some and many, sometimes and often) and stronger values (all, always) rule out any lower-clause reading for upstairs negation in the same contexts.1989, Laurence R. Horn, chapter 5, in A Natural History of Negation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 327
Adverb
upstairs (comparative further upstairs or farther upstairs, superlative furthest upstairs or farthest upstairs)
- Up the stairs; on or to a higher floor or level.
- I’ll take my shoes and put them away the next time I go upstairs.
- I hate the people who live upstairs, and I especially hate their piano.
- In the brain or mind.
- After Joe did a hula dance on the kitchen table, his friends wondered if he didn’t have a lot going on upstairs.
- I guess I'm just used to sailors / I think they got water on the brain / I think they got more water upstairs / Than they got sugar on a candy cane1982 September 24, Prince, “Nasty Girl”, in Vanity 6, performed by Vanity 6, track 1
- In heaven, especially with regard to where a deity might be found.
- In or to a higher matrix clause, as opposed to a lower embedded clause.
- Consider first the derivation in which movement is not involved, namely the surface subject is base-generated in the matrix clause (Recall that it is possible in principle to base generate the subject upstairs, as we saw in Section 2).2007, Tomohiro Fujii, “Cyclic chain reduction”, in Norbert Carver, Jairo Nunes, editors, The Copy Theory of Movement (Linguistik Aktuell; 107), Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →DOI...
Noun
upstairs (plural upstairs)
- An upper storey.
- an upstairs bathroom
- A woman's breasts.
upstairs meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Gujarati
upstairs in Tamil
- மேல்மாடி
upstairs in Malayalam
- മാളികയായ, മുകൾത്തട്ടിലുള്ള, മേലെയുള്ള
upstairs in Kannada
- ಕರುಮಾಡ, ಮಾಳಿಗೆ, ದಡ್ಡಿ, ಮಹಡಿಯ ಮೇಲೆ
upstairs in Gujarati
- upstairs
- ઊપર ūpar
More languagesFewer languages
- upstairs in Indonesian
- lantai atas
- upstairs in Persian
- طبقهٔ بالا tabaqe-ye bâlâ
Examples of upstairs in a sentence
- The woman upstairs told the people outside to stop reveling.
- In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the landlady, Mrs.1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter IV, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume I, London: James R[ipley]...
- On arrival at Birmingham New Street, I make my way upstairs to the mezzanine to get shots of an almost deserted concourse, polka-dotted with social distancing circles like some strange board-game.2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 68:
Antonyms of upstairs
Forms of upstairs
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | further upstairs |
| comparative | farther upstairs |
| superlative | furthest upstairs |
| superlative | farthest upstairs |
| alternative form (archaic) | up stairs |
| alternative form (archaic) | up-stairs |
| Adverb | |
| comparative | further upstairs |
| comparative | farther upstairs |
| superlative | furthest upstairs |
| superlative | farthest upstairs |
| Noun | |
| plural | upstairs |
Origin of upstairs
From up- + stair + -s.
Words formed from upstairs
Phrases with upstairs
Words that rhyme with upstairs
Questions about upstairs
- What does upstairs mean?
- Upstairs means located on a higher floor or level of a building.
- What is upstairs in Tamil?
- Upstairs in Tamil is மேல்மாடி. See Upstairs meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use upstairs in a sentence?
- The woman upstairs told the people outside to stop reveling.
- What part of speech is upstairs?
- Upstairs can be an adjective, an adverb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce upstairs?
- Upstairs is pronounced /ˌʌpˈstɛɹz/ (US).
Words near upstairs in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: upstairs (page history and authors); upstairs (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); upstairs (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); upstairs (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ઊપર (Gujarati) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-upstairs.ogg.
Cite this entry: “upstairs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/upstairs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.