There is a two-letter word that probably has more meaning than almost any other two-letter word. The word is “up”. It’s easy to understand the up meaning toward the sky, or toward the top of a list. But why when we awaken in the a.m., do we wake up? At a meeting, why does the topic come up, why do we speak up, and why are the officers up for election? Why is it up to the secretary to write up a report? The little word often isn’t needed, but we use it anyway.

We brighten up a room, polish up the silver, look up the house number, fix up the old car, and men sometimes light up a cigar. People stir up trouble, line up for tickets, work up an appetite, and think up excuses.

At other times this little word has real special meaning. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed up is special and this is confusing. But a drain must be opened up because it is stopped up. We open up a store in the a.m. and close it up at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed up about up. To be up on the proper use of “up”, look up the word in your dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary “up” takes up almost 1/4 of the page and definitions add up to about 30. If you are up to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways up is used. It will take up a lot of your time. But if you don’t give up you may wind up with 100 or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding up. Then when the sun comes out, we say it is clearing up. When it rains it moistens up the earth, and then when it doesn’t rain for a while things dry up. One could go on and on, but for now I’ll just shut up.

(source unknown)