"up the river" meaning in English

See up the river in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase

Audio: En-au-up the river.ogg [Australia]
Etymology: A reference to Sing Sing prison, which is located on the Hudson river, to the north of (and upstream from) New York City. Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase|head=}} up the river, {{en-PP}} up the river
  1. (US, idiomatic) To prison. Tags: US, idiomatic Categories (topical): Prison Related terms: jail

Download JSON data for up the river meaning in English (2.3kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "A reference to Sing Sing prison, which is located on the Hudson river, to the north of (and upstream from) New York City.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "up the river",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "up the river",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Prison",
          "orig": "en:Prison",
          "parents": [
            "Buildings",
            "Law enforcement",
            "Buildings and structures",
            "Crime prevention",
            "Emergency services",
            "Law",
            "Architecture",
            "Crime",
            "Public safety",
            "Justice",
            "Applied sciences",
            "Art",
            "Criminal law",
            "Society",
            "Public administration",
            "Security",
            "Sciences",
            "Culture",
            "All topics",
            "Government",
            "Fundamental",
            "Politics"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1990 July 21, “Pete Rose: He doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame”, in Dallas Morning News, retrieved 2010-09-23",
          "text": "The former baseball player that Cincinnati idolized is being sent up the river to Ashland, Ky., to serve a prison term for cheating on his taxes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To prison."
      ],
      "id": "en-up_the_river-en-prep_phrase-a8b1lP9c",
      "links": [
        [
          "prison",
          "prison"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US, idiomatic) To prison."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "jail"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-up the river.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/cc/En-au-up_the_river.ogg/En-au-up_the_river.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/En-au-up_the_river.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "up the river"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "A reference to Sing Sing prison, which is located on the Hudson river, to the north of (and upstream from) New York City.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "up the river",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "up the river",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "jail"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English prepositional phrases",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Prison"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1990 July 21, “Pete Rose: He doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame”, in Dallas Morning News, retrieved 2010-09-23",
          "text": "The former baseball player that Cincinnati idolized is being sent up the river to Ashland, Ky., to serve a prison term for cheating on his taxes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To prison."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "prison",
          "prison"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US, idiomatic) To prison."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-up the river.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/cc/En-au-up_the_river.ogg/En-au-up_the_river.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/En-au-up_the_river.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "up the river"
}

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.