How to Use one-upmanship in a Sentence

one-upmanship

noun
  • Hosting duties became a game of high-stakes one-upmanship.
    — Lauren Brown West-Rosenthal, Parents, 7 Jan. 2026
  • No one wants to be abrupt and just hang up, but there might also be some one-upmanship lurking below the surface.
    — Amy Lindgren, Twin Cities, 2 May 2026
  • Messi got to play after Mbappé last week and seemed engaged in a game of one-upmanship.
    — Tom Burrows, New York Times, 27 June 2026
  • To claim the mantle of perfectionism can become a game of one-upmanship.
    — Leslie Jamison, New Yorker, 4 Aug. 2025
  • Choose kindness over cleverness, warmth over wit, empathy over one-upmanship.
    — Glenn Kurlander, Fortune, 28 Jan. 2026
  • Having failed to secure a ticket, I was taunted with pitying one-upmanship by acquaintances who had had more success.
    — Anthony Lane, New Yorker, 13 Apr. 2026
  • Hundreds of recent statutes, executive actions, and regulations seem to play a game of one-upmanship in which states try to find ways to be even more cruel.
    — Darren Rosenblum, Mercury News, 21 Mar. 2026
  • There is a constant need to upgrade their facilities, in the silent race for prestige and primacy of which the constant prize money one-upmanship is just one element.
    — Matthew Futterman, New York Times, 6 Jan. 2026
  • This one-upmanship obscured testimony on how many games reproduced—rather than created—society’s sexist and racist ideals.
    — Time, 8 Oct. 2025
  • The drone displays and Minion cameos and technological one-upmanship that has defined this event in the 2020s were not the focus this time.
    — Judy Berman, Time, 7 Feb. 2026
  • Except, when the rehearsals start in earnest and boys enter the duo’s orbit in after-school adventures, their already off-balance dual existence and sneaky one-upmanship worsens.
    — Tomris Laffly, Variety, 24 Jan. 2026
  • What proceeds is an escalating pattern of one-upmanship and sabotage, with each trying to best the other for personal reasons more than professional ones.
    — Matt Cabral, Entertainment Weekly, 13 Apr. 2026
  • Still practicing the Gershwin standard and learning to do less in order to do more – that is, creating something richer for collaboration rather than one-upmanship.
    — John Baldoni, Forbes.com, 16 Sep. 2025
  • Young ideologues compete to prove their fealty to MAGA by engaging in a kind of transgressive one-upmanship.
    — Laura K. Field, The Atlantic, 5 Feb. 2026
  • In the matter of handmade placards—Magic Marker on cardboard, duct-taped to wooden yardsticks—there was a certain amount of politico-literary one-upmanship.
    — Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 10 Nov. 2025
  • Music promoters, both craving the one-upmanship and genuine satisfaction of getting a lucrative band back on a stage, have more money at their disposal than ever before to make their pipe dreams a reality.
    — Devon Ivie, Vulture, 13 Nov. 2025
  • But whereas that world could be characterized, at times, by macho one-upmanship that felt almost bloodthirsty, Esperantists like Jurobola were committed to a hazy vision of peace.
    — Katie Thornton, Harpers Magazine, 26 May 2026
  • Others blame the play-hard, party-hard vibe in idyllic mountain towns that can lead to substance abuse (a risk factor for suicide), as well as social media, the culture of relentless athletic one-upmanship, and the obsessive pursuit of fun.
    — Kate Siber, Outside Online, 4 Sep. 2018
  • The visit, meant to establish stability after a decade of trade wars and acrimonious one-upmanship, instead highlighted how the balance of power is tipping away from Washington.
    — Michael Schuman, The Atlantic, 15 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'one-upmanship.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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