one-upmanship
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.
That kind of provocative behavior will lead to years, even a lifetime, of one-upmanship, backbiting and behind-the-scenes maneuvers.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 3, 2025
The resulting game of financial one-upmanship has tied the fates of the world’s biggest semiconductor and cloud companies—and vast swaths of the U.S. economy—to OpenAI, essentially making it too big to fail.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2025
The skyscape of this city is peppered with examples of architectural “I’ll go higher still” one-upmanship.
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2024
In an interview with The Associated Press last month, she’d said that building relationships with small Pacific nations shouldn’t become a game of one-upmanship with China.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 18, 2023
Phony rules, which proliferate like urban legends and are just as hard to eradicate, are responsible for vast amounts of ham-fisted copyediting and smarty-pants one-upmanship.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
