Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
higher-up \high"er-up"\, n. A superior officer or official; a person having greater rank or station or quality than others; -- used chiefly in pl.
Syn: superior, superordinate.
Wiktionary
n. Somebody with greater authority, seniority, rank, status or position; one who outranks.
WordNet
n. one of greater rank or station or quality [syn: superior, superordinate] [ant: inferior]
Usage examples of "higher-up".
News of demonstrations, articles on the war, racism, counter-culture and vital info on how to bug the higher-ups and get out of the military service are all good.
The higher-ups are that frantic to be after them, but the ash would clog any machines they got and it's not that good for the beasts either.
In New England, the Indian chiefs and higher-ups were called sagamores.
But, more importantly, things were not going well when so many of the higher-ups wanted their own private armies.
Eliot or the theories of Karl Marx, the higher-ups would see to it that you were kept out of any important job.
Whatever may be happening among the higher-ups, the effect of the Russian alliance has been a tremendous net increase of pro-Russian sentiment.
Perhaps symptomatically important is the story now widely circulated, that the real reason why the higher-ups have stuck out against adopting dive-bombers is that these are cheap to manufacture and don't represent much profit.
The marines cursing and sweating under Japanese fire in the tropical night, the airmen spinning to their deaths, the naval officers and men whose bones litter the sea bottom off Guadalcanal, doubtless died damning the higher-ups who had sent them against such odds to such an out-of-the-way place.
I understand that one or two of the higher-ups are "decent sorts" (Gaither's words), but I have not met them.
It was clear that the League had intended to bottle up the Governor-General and Leia and the rest of the higher-ups in Coronet House by sealing off all the exits and burying them in rubble.
But not quite: it lacked not only a receptionist's desk but the customary multi-screen wall showing all of Ciel's channels of entertainment, edutainment, documentary, docu-dramas, sports, sports entertainment, news, and cooking (it was said one of the higher-ups in the organization had fixated on old footage of someone named Julia Child).
The suicide watch on Soneji was a big deal with the prison higher-ups.