See up a tree in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for up a tree meaning in English (2.3kB)
{
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "prepositional phrase"
},
"expansion": "up a tree",
"name": "head"
}
],
"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": "1864, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, chapter 53, in Uncle Silas",
"text": "\"I'm a bit up a tree, Miss,\" he said shuffling his feet on the oak floor. \"I behaved a fool.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1891, Laura E. Richards, chapter 14, in Hildegarde's Holiday",
"text": "I found the doctor in his study, and the whole room full of rods and lines and reels. . . . When he called me to come and look at his flies I was all up a tree, and didn't know what he was talking about.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1894, Robert Barr, chapter 7, in In the Midst of Alarms",
"text": "\"Oh, I'm up a tree again. I see I don't even know the A B C of this business.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1904, O. Henry, “The Handbook of Hymen”, in Heart of the West",
"text": "\"You're a liar,\" says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me up a tree.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1909, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 40, in Mike: A Public School Story",
"text": "The general consensus of opinion in Outwood's during the luncheon interval was that, having got Downing's up a tree, they would be fools not to make the most of the situation.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"In or into a disadvantaged or difficult situation; at a loss; cornered."
],
"id": "en-up_a_tree-en-prep_phrase-lMj3h0NH",
"links": [
[
"disadvantage",
"disadvantage"
],
[
"difficult",
"difficult"
],
[
"at a loss",
"at a loss"
],
[
"cornered",
"cornered"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, dated) In or into a disadvantaged or difficult situation; at a loss; cornered."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "over a barrel"
},
{
"word": "perplexed"
},
{
"word": "stumped"
},
{
"word": "up the creek"
}
],
"tags": [
"dated",
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-up a tree.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/dc/En-au-up_a_tree.ogg/En-au-up_a_tree.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/En-au-up_a_tree.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "up a tree"
}
{
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "prepositional phrase"
},
"expansion": "up a tree",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "prep_phrase",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English dated terms",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English prepositional phrases",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with quotations",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1864, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, chapter 53, in Uncle Silas",
"text": "\"I'm a bit up a tree, Miss,\" he said shuffling his feet on the oak floor. \"I behaved a fool.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1891, Laura E. Richards, chapter 14, in Hildegarde's Holiday",
"text": "I found the doctor in his study, and the whole room full of rods and lines and reels. . . . When he called me to come and look at his flies I was all up a tree, and didn't know what he was talking about.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1894, Robert Barr, chapter 7, in In the Midst of Alarms",
"text": "\"Oh, I'm up a tree again. I see I don't even know the A B C of this business.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1904, O. Henry, “The Handbook of Hymen”, in Heart of the West",
"text": "\"You're a liar,\" says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me up a tree.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1909, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 40, in Mike: A Public School Story",
"text": "The general consensus of opinion in Outwood's during the luncheon interval was that, having got Downing's up a tree, they would be fools not to make the most of the situation.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"In or into a disadvantaged or difficult situation; at a loss; cornered."
],
"links": [
[
"disadvantage",
"disadvantage"
],
[
"difficult",
"difficult"
],
[
"at a loss",
"at a loss"
],
[
"cornered",
"cornered"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, dated) In or into a disadvantaged or difficult situation; at a loss; cornered."
],
"tags": [
"dated",
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-up a tree.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/dc/En-au-up_a_tree.ogg/En-au-up_a_tree.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/En-au-up_a_tree.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "over a barrel"
},
{
"word": "perplexed"
},
{
"word": "stumped"
},
{
"word": "up the creek"
}
],
"word": "up a tree"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.