up a stump
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English
[edit]Prepositional phrase
[edit]- (informal) At a loss, puzzled, in a bind.
- 1892, Mark Twain, Meisterschaft: In Three Acts, act II, scene I, page 181:
- GEO. Why it's got to. Suppose we wandered out of it and took a chance at the language on our own responsibility, where the nation would we be? Up a stump, that's where. Our only safety is in sticking like wax to the text.
- 1996, Mendel Mokher Sefarim, Dan Miron, & Ken Frieden, Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler, Fishke the Lame and Benjamin the Third, Schocken Books, →ISBN, page 243:
- Whereas your ordinary middle-ranking persons, they never had the least notion of what it was, so naturally they were up a stump every time they come across it, you see.