upper story
The head or brain, as in He's not all there in the upper story. This expression transfers the literal sense of a higher floor in a multistory building to the top portion of the human body. Richard Bentley used it in A Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris (1699), where he compares a man with “brains ... in his head” to a man who has “furniture in his upper story.”
Words Nearby upper story
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
How to use upper story in a sentence
She partly opened the wooden shutter again and pointed to an upper story of the opposite building.
The Red Year | Louis TracyAnd the roof was not necessary, for the floors of the upper story served instead.
The Amazing Interlude | Mary Roberts RinehartThe greater part of the upper story does not date further back than the fifteenth century.
Belgium | George W. T. (George William Thomson) OmondMary slept that night in the same chamber as Morgiana, an airy, high-vaulted room, in an upper story of the palace.
God Wills It! | William Stearns DavisThere are paved roads, large quadrangular porticos, both on a level with the ground and with an upper story.
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