{"id":37,"date":"2007-03-30T14:06:33","date_gmt":"2007-03-30T14:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=37"},"modified":"2021-02-03T17:06:48","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T23:06:48","slug":"up-the-wazoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/verbs\/up-the-wazoo\/","title":{"rendered":"You Could Look It Up<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hope you enjoy this. Thanks to Peter H. for sending it.<\/p>\n

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is up<\/em>. It’s easy to understand up<\/em>, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake up<\/em>?<\/p>\n

At a meeting, why does a topic come up<\/em>? Why do we speak up<\/em>, why are the officers up<\/em> for election, and why is it up<\/em> to the secretary to write up<\/em> a report? <\/p>\n

We call up<\/em> our friends
\nand we use it to brighten up<\/em> a room,
\nand polish up<\/em> the silver.
\nWe warm up<\/em> the leftovers
\nand clean up<\/em> the kitchen.
\nWe lock up<\/em> the house
\nand some guys fix up<\/em> the old car.<\/p>\n

At other times the little word has real special meaning.
\nPeople stir up<\/em> trouble,
\nline up<\/em> for tickets,
\nwork up<\/em> an appetite,
\nand think up<\/em> excuses.<\/p>\n

To be dressed is one thing
\nbut to be dressed up<\/em> is special.<\/p>\n

And this up<\/em> is confusing:
\nA drain must be opened up<\/em>
\nbecause it is stopped up<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We open up<\/em> a store in the morning
\nbut we close it up<\/em> at night.
\nWe seem to be pretty mixed up<\/em> about up<\/em>!<\/p>\n

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of up<\/em>,
\nlook the word up<\/em> in the dictionary.
\nIn a desk-sized dictionary,
\nit takes up<\/em> almost 1\/4 of the page
\nand can add up<\/em> to about thirty definitions.<\/p>\n

If you are up<\/em> to it,
\nyou might try building up<\/em> a list
\nof the many ways up<\/em> is used.
\nIt will take up<\/em> a lot of your time,
\nbut if you don’t give up<\/em>,
\nyou may wind up<\/em> with a hundred or more.<\/p>\n

When it threatens to rain,
\nwe say it is clouding up<\/em>.
\nWhen the sun comes out we say it is clearing up<\/em>.
\nWhen it rains, it wets up<\/em> the earth.<\/p>\n

When it doesn’t rain for awhile,
\nthings dry up<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One could go on and on,
\nbut I’ll wrap it up<\/em>,
\nfor now my time is up<\/em>, so …<\/p>\n

Time to shut up<\/em>!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hope you enjoy this. Thanks to Peter H. for sending it. There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is up. It’s easy to understand up, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,25,33,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjectives-adverbs","category-humor","category-prepositions","category-verbs"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}