upwardly mobile

British

adjective

(of a person or social group) moving or aspiring to move to a higher social class or to a position of increased status or power

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

This is an upwardly mobile England side who are too excited about the future to chew for long over the past.

From BBC • Feb. 14, 2026

“But I still do think of this card as being worthwhile for the upwardly mobile, young professional renter. It actually is one of the most lucrative transferable-points cards on the market.”

From MarketWatch • Jan. 29, 2026

Just as his own immigrant forebears assimilated and their children were average, upwardly mobile, all-American citizens, so too are the more recent immigrants.

From Salon • Dec. 27, 2025

Mr. Leguizamo portrays the patriarch of an upwardly mobile Latin-American family who finds himself in choppy waters, both financially and emotionally.

From The Wall Street Journal • Sep. 26, 2025

Her mother, Ann, was a Powell, another educated, upwardly mobile colored family—and the same Powells who would two generations later produce Colin Powell.

From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023