Topic summary
one-upmanship
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Competition.
Competitiveness
One-upmanship, also called "one-upsmanship", is the art or practice of successively outdoing a competitor. The term was first used in the title of a book by Stephen Potter, published in 1952 as a follow-up to The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship (or the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating) (1947), and Lifemanship titles in his series of tongue-in-cheek , and film and television derivatives, that teach various ploys to achieve this. This comic satire of style guides manipulates traditional British conventions for the gamester, all life being a game, who understands that if you're not one-up, you're one-down. Potter's unprincipled principles apply to almost any possession, experience or situation, deriving maximum undeserved rewards and discomfitting the opposition. The 1960 film School for Scoundrels and its 2006 remake were satiric portrayals of how to use Potter's ideas.