whip hand

plural whip hands · alternative whip-hand

1. The hand in which a horse rider holds the whip.
2. idiomaticAn advantage over another; the dominant position.

   Of course I was a fool. My father has the whip hand of me, because he has money and I have none, and it was simply kicking against the pricks to speak as I did.

   1876, Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister, page 271

   4 more examples

   “Aye, you may abuse me as you please,” said the good-natured old lady, “you have taken Charlotte off my hands, and cannot give her back again. So there I have the whip hand of you.”

   1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

   Even the purest of all the Lamaist sects—the Ge-lug-pa—are thorough-paced devil-worshippers, and value Buddhism chiefly because it gives them the whip-hand over the devils.

   1895, L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet, page 152

   Mrs. Cavendish, however, was a lady who liked to make her own plans, and expected other people to fall in with them, and in this case she certainly had the whip hand, namely: the purse strings.

   1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 6

   Few workers are unionised, and in the UK's increasingly flexible labour market, where it is almost impossible to quit a job and claim unemployment benefits, where zero hour contracts are still a feature and where self-employment is on the rise, employers have the whip hand.

   2014, Phillip Inman, As UK economy recovers, employers remain reluctant to increase wages, The Guardian