Upside

How to spell upside

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce upside

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does upside mean?

1. nounThe positive or favourable aspect of a situation, especially a benefit that offsets a drawback.
2. nounThe potential for a price, value, or return to increase.

Upside in a sentence

• The long commute is tiring, but the upside is a much larger house.

• Analysts believe the share price still has plenty of upside left.

• Working from home has a clear upside in saved travel time.

• The fund offers strong upside with relatively limited risk.

Where does upside come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent native English compound, built from two very old Germanic words: 'up', which in Old English was 'upp' and meant 'to or in a higher place', and 'side', from Old English 'side', meaning a flank, edge, or surface. Both elements descend from the same Germanic stock that gave related forms across Dutch and German. The literal combination originally pointed to the upper part or surface of something, surviving most plainly in the phrase 'upside down', recorded from the late Medieval period. Only much more recently, mainly through twentieth-century business and finance speech, did 'upside' come to mean the favourable side of a situation, that is, the potential gain or advantage. Because both halves are ordinary everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the compound holds no real spelling trap beyond remembering it is written solid, as one word.

How the word is built

• up (adverb/preposition: higher position)
• side (a part or aspect)