Definitions
Wiktionary
- v. idiomatic to "be a man about it"; to do the things a good man is traditionally expected to do, such as: taking responsibility for the consequences of one's actions; displaying bravery or toughness in the face of adversity; providing for one's family, etc.
- v. idiomatic (of military personnel in a unit) to assemble, each person manning (attending to) his station, prepared for departure of an aircraft, ship, etc.
- v. idiomatic (of personnel, industrial, etc.) to staff adequately; to staff up; to successfully fill all needed labor positions.
- v. sports to vigorously guard the opponent to which one is assigned
Etymologies
- man + up, with influence from own up, buck up. Used frequently in military circles. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“They sent only one man up it: a specialist wearing a large silver canister on his back and holding a device that looked like a big-barreled leafblower.”
“To pick a man up out of a plant, like the Badin plant.”
“My own knee! when I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle's talon in the waist; I could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring: a plague of sighing and grief! it blows a man up like a bladder.”
“He then thought he would hire me out to a man up the river (by the name of Jimmy Benton, a still meaner man) to break me in.”
A slave's adventures toward freedom : not fiction, but the true story of a struggle
“And, through the friendly offices of the Kitterys, I was placed in connection with some very influential lawyers, who gave me that helping hand which takes a young man up the first steps of the profession.”
“The best he could do was send a man up into an exposed position to make wigwag semaphore signals to Derfflinger astern, to pass the news along.”
“Cos that good ole man up theah, he's a-countin' on you!”
“The sexuo-economic relation drives man up to where he can become fully human.”
“The N.Y. World sent a man up to see me a couple of weeks ago to get me to write six or seven hundred words for their Sunday edition.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘man up’.
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Man
Everything that contains a man in it
taxman, salesman, common man, spaceman, neolithic man, straw man, seaman, fireman, spiderman, overman, old man, con man and 373 more...
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Words of the Times
Words discovered while reading The New York Times, each with a citation from the paper.
testilying, ghost talk, apneist, solastalgia, izakaya, hooker, telectroscope, airflyte, phomance, bromhidrosis, stinky feet, cupping and 482 more...
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Pop Culture
Comic strip character names and words, along with modern slang oddities.
rowrbazzle, pogo, rhinocerwurst, bitchin', cowabunga, joe btfsplk, churchy la femme, howland owl, porky pine, miss mamselle hep..., shmoo, unobtanium and 390 more...
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zeitgeist
exaflood, negawatt, watergy, hyperconnectivity, cloud computing, man up, dongle, glamping, fakeaway, staycation, metadata, agile and 2 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for man up.
blafferty That is very sweet of yarb. I might warn people in general not to adopt any cowboys, or let your words grow up to be cowboys, however. Jun 14, 2011
bilby Blaffertjes, on the old Wordie the words that weren't listed did not have a page as such, simply a 404-style placeholder that said "Nobody is listing xxxxxx. Why don't you?" If someone listed a word, and then unlisted that word, a page would exist but with a blank 'appears in these lists:' column. We referred to these pages as ghosts or orphans. The kindly yarb set up a place to house them which is why cowboy up appears on a list called Adoption Agency. Jun 14, 2011
blafferty Not to be confused with cowboy up. Jun 14, 2011
john “I thought that when I was protecting this country, we had the best,�? said Clemons, a former combat medic in Iraq who lost his right leg in an explosion. “We do things right, we do things the best way. And just to know that other countries can man up and support their Paralympic athletes, and we’re not, it’s disappointing.�?
The New York Times, U.S. Paralympians Add Equality to Their Goals, by Alan Schwarz, September 5, 2008 Sep 6, 2008
oroboros "Man up and go for it!" (Golf ball commercial motto). Jul 22, 2007