upped and...

[Michael Quinion]

Laurence Horn wrote

> I just got around to watching an episode of The Forsyte Saga from BBC
> on a tape I'd made a few months ago.  I have no idea if this dialogue
> is taken straight from Galsworthy, but at one point Jolyon Forsyte
> acknowledges to his detested cousin Soames (the former's son Jon has
> fallen in love with the latter's daughter Fleur, in defiance of the
> animosity between the branches of the family) that "Jon just upped and
> left last night without a word".  I rewound several times to confirm
> the final cluster in [@pt]; it's definitely audible.  (This part is set
> in the early 20th century, and the characters are upper crust, albeit
> nouveau.)

It sounds remarkably unlikely to me. I checked the complete Project
Gutenberg Galsworthy files and there is no instance of "upped" in
this sense (though there are two of "thin-upped", which from context
looks like an uncorrected OCR misreading of "thin-lipped").

--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>