To steal from the wit of John Cooper Clarke, “I don’t normally do requests unless I’m specifically asked for them.” Well, someone did. We were just drinking up after having met up to discuss how we might be able to cook up a plan that might just build up some income for the two of us, when he confided that he was grappling with a personal grievance over the use of the word up.
“Why,” he asked, “do I have to finish something up? Why can’t I just finish it?”
“Listen up,” I told myself. “He’s come up with a good point.” So here goes.
Up, I think we can all agree, is a simple little word that’s easy to spell. Beyond that its place in this world becomes ambiguous. Most people would concur that it essentially describes a point somewhere higher than wherever we’re starting from. No-one in their right mind would go down into Space. Mind you, you’ve probably got to be a few atoms short of an atmosphere to go up into Space too, but the point remains. Up means up. In short, the opposite of down.
Yet when we drink up, do we not drink the last gulp down? And when we see someone who’s feeling down, do we not ask them what’s up?
Putting these contradictions aside for a moment, there’s a degree of logic in the way we apply the whole up/down combo to other opposites, e.g. louder/quieter, happy/sad, fast/slow, growth/decline, North/South. They all have a sense of getting higher or lower, the latter because you generally hold a map with North at the top, so Scotland is up and Antarctica is down. But then you’ll hear people say, “I’m going up to Cornwall.” Surely the only way to go up to Cornwall is from the sea.
To confuse matters further, along come the Cockneys with their expression “up west”, meaning the West End of London. West is neither up nor down; it’s sideways. Admittedly, if you’re travelling to, say, Oxford Street from, say, Limehouse, you would have to go uphill a bit, otherwise you’d find yourself underwater, but it’s unlikely that this was the thinking when the term originated.
Up in this case might once have implied a rise in social status – the West End being the upper class end of town – but more likely it just implied a movement forwards, as in “Are you going up West Ham on Saturday?” Conversely, south of the river they tend to go “down Millwall”. Confusing eh? I mean, why would anyone want to go and watch either?
Speaking of football, a coach will shout at his defenders to ‘get up’. He doesn’t mean it’s time they got out of bed, he means move forward towards the opposition’s end. In this instance it makes perfect sense to shout ‘get up’ because if he shouted ‘get down’ he’d more likely be rewarded with an outbreak of 70s disco dancing than a well choreographed offside trap, but what about this knotty conundrum: if you live on a road with no gradient, who’s to say which way is ‘up the road’ and which is ‘down the road’?
The bottom line (or maybe the top line) is we really don’t know which way is up or down. So let’s stick to what we do know.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that generations younger than your own will always use language in annoying ways. Hence, in the last decade or so we’ve had to endure “all good”, “can I get?” and more recently “change up”.
“4 ways to change up your wardrobe.”
“Bobby Berk’s tips to change up your décor.”
“Gizzi Erskine brings you three great ways to change up your chicken.”
I just searched these up at random and I know what they’re implying: they’re going to change things in a dynamic, energising way, as in changing up through the gears. Ok, that’s fine. But a chicken? Going up through the gears?
If up implies growth, why is your time ‘up’ when it’s run out? Why do you tie something up? Somehow, somewhere, back in the mists of time, up took on a sense of completion. Finish up, fry up, round up. But then it also took on a sense of disorder. Blow up, screw up, cock up etc etc (with increasing vulgarity). Man, this is confusing!
I’m aware that I’m not coming up with any conclusions. I’ll leave that up to you.
But finally, there’s the verb, to up. Up and leave. Up the ante… Swans on the Thames have been upped since the early 16th century, whether they liked it or not. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t all belong to the Queen. Two livery companies, the Vintners and Dyers, each have a third share of the Thames swans too, hence the exhortation ‘Up yours!’, which you’ll sometimes hear shouted between rival uppers from the Worshipful Companies as they paddle their way up the river.
