upper hand

American  

noun

1. the dominating or controlling position; advantage.

   to have the upper hand in the fight.

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upper hand British  

noun

1. the position of control; advantage (esp in the phrases have or get the upper hand )

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upper hand Idioms  

1. Also, whip hand. A dominating or controlling position, as in Once you let Jeff get the upper hand there'll be no stopping him, or When it comes to checkers, my son-in-law generally has the whip hand. The first term alludes to an ancient game in which each player in turn grasps a stick with one hand, beginning from the bottom, and the last who can put his hand at the top wins. Its figurative use dates from the late 1400s. The variant alludes to the driver who holds the whip in a horse-drawn vehicle; it was being used figuratively by the late 1600s.

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Etymology

Origin of upper hand

First recorded in 1475–85

Example Sentences

And, it keeps barriers up to give corporations the upper hand in the industry.

From Salon

“As soon as they think they have the upper hand, they’ll tell us to go away.”

From The Wall Street Journal

Both OpenAI and Anthropic have been bleeding money, losing billions of dollars annually as they race for the upper hand in the fast-growing artificial-intelligence field.

From MarketWatch

That gave existing exporters the upper hand: Exporters know that U.S. importers can’t easily find alternative suppliers, “so they face less competitive pressure to cut prices.”

From Los Angeles Times

Still, it made the action utterly compelling and, as usual, Australia ended with the upper hand.

From BBC

Related Words

• advantage
• dominance
• leverage
• superiority
• supremacy