upskip

English

Noun

upskip (plural upskips)

1. (obsolete) An upstart.
   • 1748, Charles Lucas, A thirteenth address to the free citizens and freeholders of the city of Dublin., page 31:

     If you should ever see any of the King's Judges taking upon them a legislative, instead of a judicial, Power; dispensing with, denying, or withholding the known, established Laws, or executing the Dictates of any foreign Legislature, or Jurisdiction, unapproved by our Parliament; if any such should presume to influence, or over-awe JURIES , by Threats, or other illicit Measures; or unlawfully to strip Juries of their Power, or Pivileges, or to censure, or abuse them, for making any just and lawful Presentment; for finding or rejecting any Bill, or for finding any true Verdict; or, if any of these Officers, in any other Manner commits a breach of his Oath and Duty; that Grand Jury, that does not, on the first fair Opportunity , present such an upskip, hireling Tyrant, as a Traitor and an Enemy to his King and Country; is purjured and infamous.

   • 1922, THE VILLAGER - Volume 6, page 33:

     Nobody can tell that yet, of course; it is too soon; in a month, in two months, perhaps, we shall know whether Mussolini is a real leader or an upskip.

   • 2011, Alison Weir, Children of England: The Heirs of King Henry VIII 1547-1558, page 125:

     Concern was also expressed for the King's thin and weak physique, and Bishop Latimer was worried that he was coming too much under the influence of “velvet coats and upskips" –frivolous and upstart courtiers who fawned upon the boy.

2. (phonetics) A raise in pitch with no perceptible glide connecting the tone to the previous sound
   • 1989, Dwight Le Merton Bolinger, Intonation and Its Uses: Melody in Grammar and Discourse, page 84:

     Someone reading the following aloud, The normal course will have one to three hour-examinations per term and a three-hour examination at the end of each term. will feel a need to put a pause after the first three and resume on hour with an abrupt upskip and also possibly a glottal stop plus head and hand gestures , to avoid the suggestion of three-hour as a constituent at that point.

   • 1976, Dafydd Gibbon, Perspectives of Intonation Analysis, page 222:

     Three tests are administered, in which aspects of pitch trajectories analysed as allphonic in the phonemic system turn out to have more importance than the supposedly phonemic distinctions; the second of these tests finds that upglides and upskips in a sequence that Trager & Smith (1951) would presumably transcribe /32||/ are categorically distinguished.

   • 1997, Ashok Ramchandra Kelkar, Language in a Semiotic Perspective:

     Pitch-squeeze tone modifier (sign :) is manifested by a pitch range narrowing over the whole tone cadence; hence no pitch upskip or downskip or evenskip is noticeable.

Verb

upskip (third-person singular simple present upskips, present participle upskipping, simple past and past participle upskipped)

1. (poetic) To spring or skip up.
   • 1893, Judy - Volume 53, page 29:

     With rags and leathers in his hands Upskips be ostentatiously; Anon he at the summit stands, And window cleans vivaciously.

   • 1915, Charles Anthony Lynch, Gladys Klyne and More Harmony, page 62:

     Come tumbling on to steal And gorge and gorge and gorge do bumble bees, Which, stalwart strong, rob ; while, praying some service, Upskips the weakly butterfly whose purse The good she does not get repays.

   • 1942, Robert Nichols, Such was My Singing: Being a Selection from Poems Written Between the Years 1915 and 1940:

     Suddenly the flame upskips As the seething log falls in;