Citations:up the stump

English citations of up the stump

Adjective: "(informal) at a loss, puzzled, in a bind"

					1900	1904 1907 1909	2001
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1900, Queensland Agricultural Journal, Volume 7, page 216:

  Science is up the stump. She can't find out why green sorghum should be so quickly fatal to cattle, says an exchange.

• 1904, Fibre & Fabric: A Record of American Textile Industries in the Cotton and Woolen Trade, Volume 40, page 522:

  The new man in the field laid claim to all, while he was but a follower, trailing centuries behind, and today he is "up the stump" and, in a sense, only colors to consider, and the stump growing taller every season.

• 1907, The American Journal of Clinical Medicine, Volume 14, page 662:

  He said old Dr. Blank had been attending to him all day, but was “up the stump” and wanted me to help.

• 1909, American Druggist, Volume 55, page 44:

  […] to describing and ordering the rarest and newest up to date chemical used in medical practice for your physician friend who is up the stump.

• 2001, Suzanne L. Bunkers, Diaries of Girls and Women: A Midwestern American Sampler, University of Wisconsin Press (2001), →ISBN, page 218:

  Just today I gave his history class a few questions to answer and hand in, but when it came time to answering the last two he was up the stump.

Adjective: "(Canada, informal) pregnant"

						1974 1976 1979 1987 1989 2000	2002 2008 2013
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1974, William Albert Shea, History of the Shea's^[sic] and the Paths of Adventure, page 124:

  "Old Joe has got a schoolma'am up the stump."

• 1976, Richard B. Wright, Farthings Fortune's, Macmillan of Canada (1976), →ISBN, page 266:

  Met him at a dance, a skinny little French-Canadian who shot her a line of bull and put her up the stump before waving goodbye from the troop train.

• 1979, Don Bailey, The Sorry Papers, Oberon Press (1979), →ISBN, page 144:

  My dad was a writer and he got her up the stump. They didn't have abortion in those days and she was a Catholic anyway so they went to City Hall and got a licence to get married.

• 1987, Anne Cameron, Stubby Amberchuk & The Holy Grail, Harbour Publishing (1987), →ISBN, page 75:

  "I'm real glad that you told me. When your mom and I got married, it was because she was up the stump, you know that, huh?"

• 1989, David Helwig, A Postcard from Rome, Penguin Books (1989), →ISBN, page 100:

  You're up the stump, Edith Fulton. You're going to have a baby.

• 2000, Wascana Review, Volumes 35-36, page 54:

  Crow offered her a lift home and en route got her up the stump.

• 2002, David Helwig, The Stand-In, The Porcupine's Quill (2002), →ISBN, page 48:

  The irony of van Eyck is gentle, a whimsical joke by which he places himself in the painting and shows himself as witness to the important ceremony, which, even if the bride is up the stump, is treated in a serious way.

• 2008, Trudy Fong, The Contingency Man, →ISBN, page 75:

  Matt suspects that some kind of subtle hormonal signal that Cleo is 'up the stump', as Matt puts it, is now being sent telepathically between his collection of canines.

• 2013, Dave Horton, A Hunting We Shall Go, BookRix GmbH & Co. KG (2013), →ISBN, unnumbered page:

  She's definitely pregnant. I went with her to the doctor and she is up the stump!