Dictionary

upperworld en · NOUN

Etymology

From upper + world.

Meanings

1. Heaven.
   • What is that life we ſhall live with him who is the Lord of Life in the upperworld? 1790, Timothy Priestley, The Christian's Looking-glass: Or the Timorous Soul's Guide, London: H. Trapp, page 92:
2. The surface of the earth, as opposed to the underworld (Hades), or to underground or submarine places.
   • Soon the ogress, fierce and bloodthirsty, she who for more than a hundred years had queened it in the depths, saw that a man - a queer being of the upperworld - had sunk to her realm. 1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 36:
   • In the Elysian fields he finds Eurydice, and takes her by the hand to lead her back to the upperworld. 1886, [Christoph Willibald Ritter von] Gluck, Orpheus: Opera in Four Acts, New York: Charles D. Koppel, page 4:
3. The higher-ranking part of a society; an elite.
   • Up to this level, the drug traffickers, according to Lupsha, tended "to be outside the legitimate political upperworld of Mexican elite life and national politics" (Lupsha, 1991, p. 43). 2015, Klaus von Lampe, Organized Crime, page 277:

Forms