U

The former, the more widely known, is applied to someone very restless: since the mid 1930s. Levene, 1977, describes… like a bride’s nightie as ‘terribly camp’, but cf. off like a bride’s nightie. up and down like a fiddler’s elbow is a lower-middle-class c.p. of late (? mid) C19-20 and applied to anyone very restless. Cf. in and out like a fiddler’s bitch. up and down like a shit-house seat was a Canadian Army c.p. of WW2 and referred to a gambler’s luck. (Leechman.) Contrast the prec. and cf the next: up and down like a yo-yo. This has been, since c. 1960 at the latest, and certainly in the Armed Forces, the most commonly used of all the up and down similes. Applied like the bride’s nightie, whore’s drawers, and fiddler’s elbow versions, to someone very restless, it is used perhaps more of the those servicemen who, although quite frequently promoted, are just as frequently ‘busted back down’ again. Also allusively, as in ‘He’s been up and down to corporal more times than enough. Talk about a bloody yo-yo!’ (P.B.) up and down like Tower Bridge is a Cockney c.p. of late C19-20. It has a ‘scabrous innuendo’ and is used ‘in response to How goes it?’ (L.A.) P.B.: Robert Barltrop & Jim Wolveridge, in The Muvver Tongue, 1980, maintain that it is simply a punning reply to a friendly enquiry, without any double entendre: life is changeable. up and down! Mind the dresser! A C20 Anglo-Irish c.p. employed of a party held at a farmer’s house. (The dresser is, of course, the piece of furniture, not a person.) up for grabs. With ref. to the expression it’s up for grabs, J.W.C., 1977, glosses, ‘Whoever succeeds in grabbing it first, gets it (for good): American: since c. 1950. Very common’. P.B.: but a substantive may replace it, e.g. the piece of land; the commercial proposition; the idea. Perhaps rather idiom than c.p. Some use in UK in later C20. up goes McGinty’s goat. Things become exciting, e.g. as at a great explosion:? orig. Anglo-Irish: prob. latish C19-mid C20. In William Guy Carr’s Brass Hats and Bell-Bottomed Trousers, 1939, but valid for the RN throughout WW1, we read that an enemy shell lands ‘kerplunk’ among a cluster of British lyddite shells ‘and up goes McGinty’s goat’. Cf down went McGinty. up, Guards, and at ’em! is a c.p. of light-hearted or, at the least, nonchalant defiance, virtually synon. with let ’em all come!: late C19-20. Based upon a famous quot’n that is almost certainly apocryphal: in 1852, when asked what he had, in the fact, said at the Battle of Waterloo (22 June 1815), the Duke of Wellington replied to the anecdotist J.W. Croker: ‘What I must have said and possibly did say was, Stand up. Guards! and then gave the commanding officers the order to attack.’ (ODQ.) By ‘what I must have said’, he clearly meant ‘If I said anything, it would have been “Stand up, Guards!”’ Nevertheless, there is no need to deny that up, Guards, and at ’em long ago achieved full c.p. status. up, guards, and a tap! According to H.W.Fowler and I.P. Watt, in an excellent article pub’d in a ship’s news-sheet of late 1945, among WW2 prisoners of war-in the Far East, ‘Our officers spurred themselves to greater efforts in hut-building with the cry, “Up guards and atap!” [Note. All our huts were atap-roofed].’ A debonair pun on up, Guards, and at ’em! Also noted that atap is a Malayan word for thatch made from napa palm leaves. up in Annie’s room. An Army c.p., slightly prec. WW1, but at its height during it, in answer to ‘Where’s so-and-so?’—esp. to an enquiring sergeant or corporal. In contrast to the sombre hanging on the (old) barbed wire and-orig., at leastimplying that the sought one was ‘a bit of a lad with the girls’. Hence, a double in the game of darts.