Englishget-up-and-go
Meaning: Physical energy.
Example: “At eighty, my grandmother has more get-up-and-go than I do.”
Origin: American, first recorded around 1907, joining together three of the plainest words in English — get, up, and go — into a single compound noun for personal energy, drive, or initiative. An older, still-heard regional variant, "get up and get," carried the identical meaning and circulated widely enough in parts of the United States to still turn up in the early 1960s, including in a quotation from Lady Bird Johnson. The idiom's real cleverness is structural rather than metaphorical: it takes the literal physical sequence of rising and moving and repurposes the whole action, verb by verb, as the name for the personal quality that makes that sequence happen in the first place.
More English idioms
- the gift of gab The ability to speak easily and well.
- give in To surrender.
- give someone a hard time To be difficult with someone; to give someone unnecessary difficulty.
- give someone a piece of one's mind To confront someone who has behaved badly.
- give someone a ring To call someone on the telephone.
- give someone a song and dance To give someone an overly dramatic or unbelievable excuse.
Explore another collection: False Friends
Words that look familiar in another language but mean something else entirely.
- Sensible Actually means 'sensitive'. For sensible/level-headed, say raisonnable.
- Librairie Actually means 'bookshop'. A library is une bibliothèque.
- Constipado Actually means 'having a head cold'. Estoy constipado = I have a cold.
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