Up

Part of speech: adverb, preposition, adjective, noun, verb

Definitions

1. Toward or at a higher place ; out of bed or on one's feet ; at a greater amount or level ; working properly and running ; concluded or past its deadline ; to raise something or make it greater
2. Heading toward an elevated spot ; risen from bed or standing again ; having grown in quantity or intensity ; operating as intended ; ended, as when a time limit has passed ; to boost a figure or lift something
3. Located at a height or moving to an elevated position ; awake or back on one's feet ; raised to a greater level ; functioning normally and ready for use ; finished or no longer valid ; to increase or lift

Etymology: The word "up" is one of English's oldest and most stubborn short words, and its shape has barely changed in over a thousand years. Its Old English form "upp" appears in the earliest English writing, and it belongs to a family spread across the whole Germanic world: Dutch "op", German "auf", Swedish "upp", and Gothic "iup" all mean the same thing. Its ultimate ancestor, reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, is a root meaning something like "up" or "over", which is why it looks so much like the Latin "super" family in spirit, though the two are not directly related in form. Since its earliest days, "up" has been a small, flexible workhorse. It moved from describing physical height into a huge range of figurative uses, from "up to date" to "up in arms" to a dispute that is "up for debate." Its middle-English spelling wandered between "up", "op", and "oup" before settling on the form used today, a reminder that spelling was still unfixed when the word was already doing much of its modern work.

Synonyms: above, upward, aloft

Antonyms: down