Talk:up to something

RFD discussion: September 2023–February 2024

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up to something

We have the relevant senses at the preposition up to. I'd previously thought that this should be merged with be up to, but that should be deleted too. DCDuring (talk) 15:42, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep. It is an idiomatic expression, "something" that can't be defined, and it has been WOTD. There's translations too. DonnanZ (talk) 18:10, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I think keep—WT:FRIED, the meaning of the components is restricted in a way that's not obvious pragmatically. It's not entirely watertight: there are very sporadic cases of things like "up to something good"—"they're up to something good" has two legitimate hits on Google Books. But I can't find more divergent examples that might be hypothetically possible like "up to something" meaning "ready to do something", and unqualified it certainly seems to imply scheming. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:11, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete. SOP with sense “Doing; involved in” of up to + context relating the facts substantiating a suspicion. One can also talk about doing tings; which is SOP especially the way I defined ting, together with peng ting; but here “something” does not even have a connotation justifying such gloss, but such senses depend even more on context, which does not mean conversely that combinations are not SOP. Fay Freak (talk) 18:21, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

The point is it's not dependent on context in English. "He's up to various things" is neutral without context, "he's up to something" is not. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:02, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep per my "figure it out" rationale. Deleting this makes sense only if we assume the reader already knows which sense of up to and which sense of something are being used in this context. But someone who knows those things doesn't need to look them up in a dictionary. —Soap— 18:41, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna There's something at work here, but I don't think it's lexical as much as pragmatic. Pronouns starting with "some", under certain circumstances, seem to have the implication that 1) It would be reasonable to expect that the referent would be known. 2) It isn't. 3) Therefore, one can't trust what one is being told. Examples: "Someone was in the house that night." "He knows something." "They found out somehow".

In this case, you get a similar connotation if you say "I don't know what he's up to". The question "what are you up to?" can have that connotation, as can "what are you doing?", though there are other readings, depending on the context: one might answer "oh, not much, just puttering around", or, flippantly, "two pints a day" or "chapter 5". Chuck Entz (talk) 00:09, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I also assumed something like that before actually searching, but in fact on a (non-exhaustive) search I didn't find a single unqualified instance where it meant something other than scheming/mischief, so it seems rather more fixed than your examples. Other dictionaries often also highlight scheming as a distinct sense: the problem is that they rarely distinguish between up to something as such and up to... (an object) in general (Farlex Idioms is an exception, explicitly distinguishing "up to (something)" and "up to something"). So the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms simply notes "this usage can mean 'devising' or 'scheming'", but their example there is the only one that actually uses the word "something". Longman has a sense line "doing something secret or something that you should not be doing", which again has the only usex with "something" actually in it. All of this isn't totally conclusive for a fixed phrase, but certainly seems suggestive hence my "leaning". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:48, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

RFD-kept. PUC – 20:44, 10 February 2024 (UTC)