Uparmoring

[James A. Landau]

I doubt that "uparmoring" etc. are related to "upstage".  The "up" in
"upstage" does not mean "vertically higher" but rather "further from the audience"
although it may have been suggested by stages (or stage sets) that stair-step
upwards, i.e. the back of the stage is higher than the front.  "To upstage"
means according to MWCD11 "to force (an actor) to face away from the audience by
staying upstage".

(BTW, I think the above definition is wrong.  I remember a director in
community theater explaining to the cast that while speaking you never faced away
from the audience.  Instead there was a technique whose name I forget in which
the actor, purporting to turn to speak to someone upstage, would start turning
his head to face upstage but would stop the movement when he/she was facing
the wings, that is, when facing parallel to the front of the stage.  Supposedly
the audience members would take the beginning of the move for the completion
and consider the actor to be facing upstage when in fact he was delivering his
lines to the wings.)

I have heard the verb "to uplevel".  In the computer field it means to
upgrade a system so that the software is at the current or most recent level offered
by the software vendor.

     - Jim Landau