"on one's uppers" meaning in English

See on one's uppers in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase

Etymology: From uppers (“the top part of a leather shoe”), having worn through the sole. Etymology templates: {{m|en|uppers||the top part of a leather shoe}} uppers (“the top part of a leather shoe”) Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase|head=}} on one's uppers, {{en-prep phrase}} on one's uppers
  1. destitute; poor. Synonyms: down on one's uppers
    Sense id: en-on_one's_uppers-en-prep_phrase-jjPbUceT Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for on one's uppers meaning in English (1.2kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "uppers",
        "3": "",
        "4": "the top part of a leather shoe"
      },
      "expansion": "uppers (“the top part of a leather shoe”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From uppers (“the top part of a leather shoe”), having worn through the sole.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "on one's uppers",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "on one's uppers",
      "name": "en-prep phrase"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1902, Guy Wetmore Carryl, How a Cat Was Annoyed and a Poet Was Booted",
          "text": "We are bound toward the scuppers,\nAnd the time has come to act,\nOr we’ll both be on our uppers\nFor a fact!",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "destitute; poor."
      ],
      "id": "en-on_one's_uppers-en-prep_phrase-jjPbUceT",
      "links": [
        [
          "destitute",
          "destitute"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "down on one's uppers"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "on one's uppers"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "uppers",
        "3": "",
        "4": "the top part of a leather shoe"
      },
      "expansion": "uppers (“the top part of a leather shoe”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From uppers (“the top part of a leather shoe”), having worn through the sole.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "on one's uppers",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "on one's uppers",
      "name": "en-prep phrase"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English prepositional phrases",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1902, Guy Wetmore Carryl, How a Cat Was Annoyed and a Poet Was Booted",
          "text": "We are bound toward the scuppers,\nAnd the time has come to act,\nOr we’ll both be on our uppers\nFor a fact!",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "destitute; poor."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "destitute",
          "destitute"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "down on one's uppers"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "on one's uppers"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.