uppers
- 1The sections of a shoe that sit above the sole and normally stay clear of the ground.
Water seeped through the worn uppers long before the soles gave out.
The factory cuts and shapes the uppers before bonding them to the midsole.
Note
Here the word names what remains when the sole gives out. That is the picture behind walking on one's uppers: shoes worn so far through that the foot meets the ground on the part meant to sit above it. The phrase takes a possessive (his uppers, her uppers) and describes a shoe at the last stage of wear. The word is normally plural because each shoe of the pair has its own upper.
- 2Plural of upper.
The cobbler ordered new uppers to repair the worn boots.
Both uppers had stretched out of shape over the summer.
Note
A plain -s plural that inherits every meaning of upper, so the surrounding words do the sorting. Uppers can be stimulant pills such as amphetamines, the top parts of shoes (the shoemaker's sense), the Y-shaped straps of flip-flops, or people of higher social standing. Set a cobbler's order beside a warning about pills, and the same word means leather in one and a drug in the other.
uppers is a form of upper
upper, noun: The higher or top part of something, or the higher of two similar things. Full entry
- Forms
- upperuppers plural
- Spelling
- upper → uppers: add -s
Use it in a sentence
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