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

Jason, who was capped for England, jokingly replied: "It’s always like one-upmanship on who can get hurt the worst."

From BBC • Sep. 2, 2024

The NBA these past few weeks has featured an almost nightly display of one-upmanship among the game’s greatest scorers.

From Seattle Times • Jan. 10, 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