- 1
One-upmanship is the habit of trying to look better than other people, whatever they have just done. They tell a story; you tell a bigger one. They buy something nice; you mention something nicer. It is not one joke. It is a small, ongoing contest to stay a step ahead. People usually say the word with a sigh or a half-smile, not as praise. It suggests the game is a bit small-minded, even when it is funny. You can one-up a friend — that is the verb. One-upmanship is the whole style of doing it. The word is informal, a little old-fashioned, and more at home in writing or in a sharp remark than in a child's textbook. Still, adults know it.
處處想壓人一頭、好勝逞強
組成From one-up + -manship, probably modelled after gamesmanship. one-up means a step ahead of someone. -manship is the ending in gamesmanship and sportsmanship: a way of playing a social game.
同家族的字
- one-upthe base: to one-up someone is to get a step ahead of them
- gamesmanshipone-upmanship was probably modelled on this word; both use -manship for a way of playing a game
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
one-upmanshipnoun/(ˌ)wʌnˈʌpmənʃɪp/
- 1
The art or practice of successively outdoing a competitor.
- They are focused on one-upmanship, which is the essence of a competitive spirit.
- [V]arious emirates wanted their own ‘international’ airport, then an ‘international’ harbour, then cement factories, then container ports, then petro-chemical plants, then skyscraper hotels and, most recently, ‘international’ trade centres. […] The impetus for these projects continues to be ‘one-upmanship’ and inter-emirate competition for commercial pre-eminence and regional prestige. […] Outsiders, anxious to win lucrative contracts, have consistently taken advantage of these features of competitive one-upmanship among the UAE member states.
- 2
A succession of instances of outdoing a competitor.
- I think all readers will be impressed by the manner in which Marwick places his own analysis in relation to previous studies both of sorcery and of conflict in general. His punctiliousness here contrasts sharply with the practice of some anthropologists who, in a contest of one-upmanship, score points either by ignoring earlier work or even by baldly asserting that it was all wrong.
- Even these debates rarely constituted an exchange of ideas; they more resembled a contest of sectional champions, or a game of righteous, intellectual, and regional one-upsmanship.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。