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upper hand
noun
- the dominating or controlling position; advantage:
to have the upper hand in the fight.
upper hand
noun
- the upper handthe position of control; advantage (esp in the phrases have or get the upper hand )
51³Ô¹Ï History and Origins
Origin of upper hand1
Idioms and Phrases
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.Example Sentences
That option appears unlikely, but the possibility could give the city a bit of leverage at a time Moreno has the upper hand.
It's in aerial combat that the military regime has the upper hand.
Recent US moves could be viewed as an attempt to gain the upper hand in these strategic North Americans regions.
The army has the upper hand now in this terrible war, but there is much suffering still to come for Sudan's people.
But simplicity gives “Instruments of a Beating Heart†an upper hand, making this modest short deceptively layered and just as poignant as any other film in the documentary short film category.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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