bottom-up

adjective

bot·​tom-up ˈbä-təm-ˈəp 

: progressing upward from the lowest levels (as of a stratified organization or system)

bottom-up management

Examples of bottom-up in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Other scientists go bottom-up, mimicking in a lab what Earth’s environment might have been like billions of years ago to try to produce the complex chemistry that became biology, as Miller and Rheinstädter have done. — Sarah Scoles, Scientific American, 15 Sep. 2026

Trivariate founder Adam Parker screened for stocks with a bottom-up consensus projection of at least 1% of gross margin contraction in the next fiscal year. — Alex Harring, CNBC, 1 Sep. 2026

Top-down control and bottom-up insurgency are changing the nation’s politics. — Theodore R. Johnson, Washington Post, 26 Aug. 2026

Portland’s Dignity Village Dignity Village in Portland, Oregon, illustrates what this bottom-up response looks like. — Brandon Marc Finn, The Conversation, 26 Aug. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1930, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for bottom-up

• buttercup
• backup
• blowup
• breakup
• buildup
• checkup
• cleanup
• holdup
• hookup
• lineup
• lockup
• makeup