Word.ws English Dictionary

work one's way up

work one's way up noun: to climb something effortfully.

Noun

work one's way up (third-person singular simple present works one's way up, present participle working one's way up, simple past and past participle worked one's way up)

  1. to climb something effortfully
  2. to reach higher positions through effort after starting at lower levels or the very bottom
    • He worked his way up from janitor to regional manager.
    1. to climb the figurative corporate ladder
    2. to rise within a hierarchical order

Forms of work one's way up

third-person singular presentworks one's way up
present participleworking one's way up
past participleworked one's way up
pastworked one's way up

Questions about work one's way up

What does work one's way up mean?
Work one's way up means to climb something effortfully.
What part of speech is work one's way up?
Work one's way up is a noun.

Words near work one's way up in the dictionary

  1. work one's guts out
  2. work one's magic
  3. work one's passage
  4. work one's tail off
  5. work one's way
  6. work one's way up
  7. work oneself to the bone
  8. work order
  9. work orders
  10. work out
  11. work over

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: work one's way up (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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