With all our talk here about what is a word, Proofreader suggested that I post this discussion (from an email I had received) on "up" that I'd posted on my Blog. I found it fascinating.
quote:
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.' It's easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special .
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
According to an interview I heard some time ago with McWhirter, the word "set" (or "sett") had 176 different meanings. I don't know whether "up" beats that.
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
I was all set to look that up, Richard, but you beat me to it. If I thought it was a set-up I might get upset.This message has been edited. Last edited by: jerry thomas,
Posts: 6708 | Location: Kehena Beach, Hawaii, U.S.A.
Certainly if you try to define the meanings of the particles in all those phrasal verbs you'll build an enormous number of definitions for words like "up".
After all what does "up" mean (dictionary style definitions please ) in
get up set up throw up act up wake up take up make up think up drink up bunk up pick up pick up on rip up trip up give up
I may decide to call that a poem.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
Interesting how "up" vs. "down" can change an idiom.
A BBC radio announcer must have misunderstood the idiom in reporting the recent turmoil in the finacial industry: FNMA, Lehman Brother, Merrill Lynch, AIG. He should have spoken of the shake up in the industry, not the shake down.
Well, perhaps. Shake-down has two meanings for me.
1) Extortion. 2) Weeding out of problems. Like a shake-down cruise of a new ship.
A shake-up isn't exactly right to describe what is happening right now in the financial markets. It isn't merely being re-arranged, it is having real problems identified, and (with luck) solved.
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