The Collaborative International Dictionary
Upper \Up"per\, a.; comp. of Up. Being further up, literally or figuratively; higher in place, position, rank, dignity, or the like; superior; as, the upper lip; the upper side of a thing; the upper house of a legislature. The upper hand, the superiority; the advantage. See To have the upper hand, under Hand. --Jowett (Thucyd.). Upper Bench (Eng. Hist.), the name of the highest court of common law (formerly King's Bench) during the Commonwealth. Upper case, the top one of a pair of compositor's cases. See the Note under 1st Case, n., 3. Upper covert (Zo["o]l.), one of the coverts situated above the bases of the tail quills. Upper deck (Naut.), the topmost deck of any vessel; the spar deck. Upper leather, the leather for the vamps and quarters of shoes. Upper strake (Naut.), the strake next to the deck, usually of hard wood, and heavier than the other strakes. Upper ten thousand, or (abbreviated) Upper ten, the ten thousand, more or less, who are highest in position or wealth; the upper class; the aristocracy. [Colloq.] Upper topsail (Naut.), the upper half of a double topsail. Upper works (Naut.), all those parts of the hull of a vessel that are properly above water. Upper world.
The atmosphere.
Heaven.
This world; the earth; -- in distinction from the underworld.
Usage examples of "upper works".
The plane nearer the bows dropped its torpedo less than two hundred yards away, pulled up in a maximum climbing turn to starboard, a fusillade of light cannon and machine-gun shells smashing into the upper works of the bridge: the torpedo hit the water obliquely, porpoised high into the air, then crashed back again nose first into a heavy wave, diving steeply into the sea: it passed under the Ulysses.
The officers directed the moving of every heavy thing in the ship's upper works as far forward as possible, and the black gang below shifted as much coal as possible into the hold's forward bunkers.
Pompoms and machine guns from the shore were raking her upper works into smoking scrap.
As I begin moving forward once more, the rest of the ceiling gives way and I am buried under a thundering cascade of falling rock that covers my upper works completely.
A fortress prisoner up here in the upper works, totally out of bounds: somebody could be shot!
Her upper works stretched from blunt bow to a perfectly squared stern, like a rectangular box laid horizontal.
His hair was a neatly combed brown, and he lived inside a medium-sized body whose upper works was covered by a black aloha shirt that looked as if it had been worn in a Ferrari driven around Honolulu by Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum.
Instead of the traditional British black hull and white on the upper works, the ship is painted entirely in a soft slate blue with a sharply raked funnel banded in royal purple and burgundy.
She hung suspended for nearly a minute, her ice-shrouded upper works giving her the look of an apparition.