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 Tracy
  • And the roof was not necessary, for the floors of the upper story served instead.

    The Amazing Interlude | Mary Roberts Rinehart
  • The greater part of the upper story does not date further back than the fifteenth century.

    Belgium | George W. T. (George William Thomson) Omond
  • Mary 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 Davis
  • There are paved roads, large quadrangular porticos, both on a level with the ground and with an upper story.