Talk:man up

From the Tea Room discussion, December 2007

man up
Can you guys help me comprehend all the senses of man up. It has a verb sense, as in... "A lot of people are expecting me to provide for them, I'd better man up". And I have a vague notion it has an interjection sense in sports ("Man up!") or something. Looking at b.g.c. it's difficult to research. A little easier to research "manning up" but that confuses me more because it seems to have LOTS of distinct unrelated meanings. Language Lover 09:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Sounds more like an oblique figurative use, not a set phrase, to me. --Connel MacKenzie 19:13, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It is a set phrase, attributive verb use of the word "man", as in "doing the things a good man is traditionally expected to do". In use since at least the 50's, often in military circles. Search BGC "have to man up" for some examples. Used with influence from "own up" and "buck up" (for the want of a stronger emphatic) in situations such as this: one who impregnates a girl out of wedlock will be told to "man up" and marry the girl or otherwise provide for her; one can "man up" and finally confront his abusive coach or employer; one can "man up" and quit crying about a particular tragedy. To "be a man about it". I'll try to find some good cites for the entry. -- Thisis0 00:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Also I should note the team-sports, macro-economics/staffing, and procedural-military uses:
 * (Am. football, basketball, etc.; rare) Man up! -- "Get on your man!" (Each of you, guard the opponent to whom you were assigned and stay on him vigorously.)
 * (of personnel - industrial, etc.) to man up -- to staff adequately; to staff up; to successfully fill all needed labor positions.
 * -...it will become even more difficult to man up industrial occupations to which outmoded conceptions of status...
 * -To man up the last batch of capital goods produced, entrepreneurs are scraping up the remnants of the reserve of unemployed labour...
 * -...it will be impossible to find the labour to man up all the available capital equipment for productive use.
 * (of military personnel in a unit) to man up -- to assemble, each person manning (attending to) his station, prepared for departure of an aircraft, ship, etc.
 * It is now my opinion that other uses arose from the military-assembling use. The sports use is rare, and most players would more readily recognize "Get on your man!". If a player is told to Man up! on the field, in context it may be, for example, a hunched-over out-of-breath player being told to "buck up", "stay in the game", "be a man" -- precisely the first sense we discussed.  Further, the staffing use has become outdated, while politically correct society no longer favors referring to "manpower", "manning" a position, etc. -- Thisis0 18:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

boss up vs person up
Nobody really respects person up .... i recommend using something like boss up if you want to be gender neutral. boss is a strong word and retains the force of the original even if the semantics are different. I have never seen either a man or a woman say person up. — Soap — 02:23, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Person up is like "peoplekind", "humankind", and other such terms. Unlike creative formations like "firefighter", "spox" (which, contrary to our listed definition, isn't solely journalism slang), etc., "peoplekind", "humankind", etc. uncreatively attach "person" or "people" to an otherwise native formation, which creates an artificial and silly sound to the resulting word.


 * But then again, the written word is much less respected these days than it once was, and younger folks tend to not have good wordstocks and/or grammar comprehension. A lot of second language English speakers speak and write better English than young, native English speakers. Tharthan (talk) 23:52, 1 October 2020 (UTC)