upperworld

English

Etymology

From upper +‎ world.

Noun

upperworld (plural upperworlds)

  1. Heaven.
    • 1790, Timothy Priestley, The Christian's Looking-glass: Or the Timorous Soul's Guide, London: H. Trapp, page 92:
      What is that life we ſhall live with him who is the Lord of Life in the upperworld?
  2. The surface of the earth, as opposed to the underworld (Hades), or to underground or submarine places.
    • 1886, [Christoph Willibald Ritter von] Gluck, Orpheus: Opera in Four Acts, New York: Charles D. Koppel, page 4:
      In the Elysian fields he finds Eurydice, and takes her by the hand to lead her back to the upperworld.
    • 1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 36:
      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.
  3. The higher-ranking part of a society; an elite.
    • 2015, Klaus von Lampe, Organized Crime, page 277:
      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).
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