How to Use one-up in a Sentence

one-up

verb

• Clearly, the 170 is about the numbers, and Dodge had to one-up the old Demon.
  — Eric Stafford, Car and Driver, 20 Mar. 2023
• Well now, DeSantis has a new idea to one-up the House of Mouse: turn it into a big house.
  — Tori Otten, The New Republic, 18 Apr. 2023
• But on Friday, DraftKings swooped in and offered to one-up the offer with a $195 million all-cash bid.
  — Aaron Pressman, BostonGlobe.com, 16 June 2023
• Leave it to method-dressing queen Margot Robbie to try and one-up her in a Mugler spring 1996 corset at the Oscars.
  — Alice Newbold, Vogue, 12 Mar. 2024
• Chance one-upped his fellow coach by also singing the song with Nadége onstage; the surprise move helped Chance persuade the singer to join his team.
  — USA TODAY, 20 Mar. 2024
• All this results in a hotel that wows from the first impression and then one-ups itself at every turn.
  — Tribune News Service, Hartford Courant, 1 Jan. 2024
• No one was trying to one-up one another, as in the typical writers room.
  — Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 16 Aug. 2023
• The office environment will feel tense as everyone will be trying to one-up their peers to keep their jobs.
  — Jack Kelly, Forbes, 16 Mar. 2023
• But there's one thing that's more important to Blake: one-upping her hubby in their never-ending troll-fest.
  — Stephanie Sengwe, Peoplemag, 14 Feb. 2024
• Which brings us to this year’s Bruins, who were historically dominant to one-up that Lightning squad to the tune of 65 wins.
  — Amin Touri, BostonGlobe.com, 30 Apr. 2023
• These mitts are also waterproof, so your hands will stay safe if hot liquids splash onto your gloves, a one-up over fabric mitts.
  — Parker Hall, WIRED, 29 June 2023
• Shortstop Jorge Mateo also homered — one-upping Henderson with a 433-foot shot to left field for his first home run of the season.
  — Jacob Calvin Meyer, Baltimore Sun, 4 Apr. 2023
• Be Consistent Parents often try to one-up each other after a split to win the kids’ affection.
  — Michelle Dempsey-Multack, Parents, 30 Jan. 2024
• But Muñoz isn’t the type to be complacent, and is always looking to one-upping his previous releases.
  — Isabela Raygoza, Billboard, 1 Dec. 2023
• Of all of the new stuff in the Framework Laptop 16, this is also the part that most obviously one-ups the experience of opening up the original Framework Laptop.
  — Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica, 29 Jan. 2024
• Jeremiah can one-up his brother by purchasing a + Qu’hier - Que Demain necklace, a much subtler love token.
  — Hannah Jackson, Vogue, 4 Dec. 2023
• The giver of advice is one-up, superior in knowledge and, by virtue of exercising the right to tell the other what to do, also superior in rank.
  — Deborah Tannen, Scientific American, 1 Mar. 2016
• An inning later, outfielder Micah McDowell one-upped his freshman teammate with a 443-foot blast to deep right field, smashing the first home run of his career.
  — Joe Freeman, oregonlive, 3 Mar. 2023
• The one-upping stage magicians of The Prestige, who go mad trying to best one another, are distinctly Nolanish figures.
  — WIRED, 24 July 2023
• This cookie recipe takes all of our favorite notes from the classic cake, even using cake mix in the cookie dough, but has a few additional surprises to one-up its inspiration.
  — Southern Living Editors, Southern Living, 6 Oct. 2023
• Danny consistently one-ups the guy, joining the church basketball team and singing during devotion.
  — Sonia Rao, Washington Post, 6 Apr. 2023
• Its goofier vision for the sequel even managed to one-up the iconic and frankly harrowing girl-falling-out-of-a-window-in-reverse teaser from the series debut three years earlier.
  — Matt Gardner, Forbes, 18 Apr. 2023
• Many have read into that iconic fashion moment, claiming that Harlow was attempting to one-up her catwalk colleague.
  — Emily Kirkpatrick, Peoplemag, 27 Sep. 2023
• Mixing in a one-of-a-kind camping experience is an ideal way to one-up the sensation since the next total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous U.S. won’t happen until 2044.
  — Rachel Chang, Travel + Leisure, 10 July 2023
• This being a sequel that feels the need to one-up its predecessor, those shenanigans have escalated from interrupted wedding ceremonies to shootouts with the Cuban coast guard.
  — Michael Nordine, Variety, 25 Aug. 2023
• Through the centuries, armchair naturalists have come up with a host of theories about avian travel, one-upping each other in inventiveness.
  — Christoph Irmscher, WSJ, 9 Mar. 2023
• But a team of researchers from Switzerland and Albania managed to one-up even that by unearthing part of this find below water, and showing how the village was once built on stilts with thousands of wooden spikes encircling it as a defense mechanism.
  — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 15 Aug. 2023
• In fact, a lot of these generative AI images are almost like one-up contests in that space, like who can do a better job of fabricating reality around a particular topic.
  — Fortune Editors, Fortune, 14 Feb. 2024
• Rather, the rail alternatives that have been springing up worldwide are focused on making five-star (stationary) hotel suites seem passé by one-upping them with ever-more lavish experiences.
  — Lucy Alexander, Robb Report, 23 Apr. 2023
• The new version of the running vest—appropriately titled the Another Mile Vest—one-ups the support with water-repellant, four-way-stretch fabric balanced out by lightweight insulation.
  — Rachel Chang, Condé Nast Traveler, 30 Nov. 2023

Last Updated: 27 Jun 2024