▪ I. † ˈupping, vbl. n.1 Obs.
[OE. ypping, f. yppan uppe v.]
Manifestation, making known.
| c 950 Rit. Durham 195 Epiphania, manifestatio, ypping. a 1225 Ancr. R. 148 God dede idrawen uorð nis nout one uorloren þuruh þet uppinge, auh þuncheð ȝet atelich biuoren Godes eien. |
▪ II. ˈupping, vbl. n.2
[f. up v.]
1. The action of catching and marking swans. (See up v. 1, and cf. swan-hopping, -upping.)
| 1560–1 in W. H. Turner Select. Rec. Oxford (1880) 285 For upping of half game in cowemeade, iiij d. 1570–1 Ibid. 338 For upping of swans, viij s. 1593 Buckhurst in Kempe Losely MSS. (1836) 306 That the upping of all those swans..may be upped all in on day w{supt} the upping of the Tems. 1892 Pall Mall G. 2 Aug. 2/1 The operation of ‘upping’ is performed by the Crown and the Companies' swan-masters together. |
| attrib. 1572–3 in W. H. Turner Select. Rec. Oxford (1880) 350 Chargys aboute the swanes..at the syttynge tyme and uppynge tyme. 1584–5 Order for Swans, His Dinner and Supper free, on the vpping day. |
2. The action of getting up; only attrib. in upping-block, upping-stock, upping-stone, a horse-block, a mounting-stone.
Also in dial. use with -chock, -steps.
| 1796 Grose's Dict. Vulgar T. (ed. 3), *Upping block, steps for mounting a horse. 1826 Cobbett Rur. Rides (1830) 529 Houses..with large stone upping-blocks against the walls of them. 1883 Trans. Amer. Philol. Soc. 55 Upping⁓block, ‘a horse-block,’ in common use in West Virginia. |
| a 1691 Aubrey Nat. Hist. Wilts (1847) 26 At the foot of Shotover-hill, near the *upping-stock. 1820 Sporting Mag. VI. 159 An itinerant preacher on the upping-stock at the back of my house. 1856 G. Roberts Soc. Hist. Eng. 560 Upping stocks and horse blocks were necessary when double horses were in use. |
| 1809 Hazlitt in The Hazlitts (1911) I. 433 A conception of the ladder which I learned from the *upping stone on the down. |
3. dial. The end, issue, or upshot of a matter.
| 1828– in Yks. and Lanc. glossaries. |