[Grammar] What do you have up your sleeve.

[Maybo]

What do you have up your sleeve?

What does up mean?

 

[GoesStation]

In this idiom, it means "in a direction away from the ground". The idiom comes from card-playing or stage magic, where someone may hide a playing card or other object in their sleeve.

 

[Rover_KE]

Maybo, please reconsider the punctuation mark that should follow 'sleeve'.

 

[Maybo]

In this idiom, it means "in a direction away from the ground". The idiom comes from card-playing or stage magic, where someone may hide a playing card or other object in their sleeve.

So, up means like the movement of taking out of the card? Away from the sleeve?

 

[GoesStation]

No. Imagine you're standing up with your arm hanging loosely. If you have something hidden in your sleeve, it's further from the ground than the end of your sleeve; it's up your sleeve.

 

[teechar]

Think of "up" as "hidden in".

 

[Maybo]

Think of "up" as "hidden in".

Away from ground and hidden in sleeve?

 

[teechar]

Away from the ground and hidden in sleeve?

It's hardly going to be close to the ground, is it?

GoesStation was trying to explain to you what "up" connotes in that expression.

 

[jutfrank]

Confusingly, it doesn't have to be "away from the ground" if, for example, the arm is horizontal like when the elbows are resting on the table. It could even be in a direction towards the ground, depending on the position of the arm. It just means 'hidden in the sleeve'.

 

[emsr2d2]

It's connected to a magician's trick of hiding a card up their sleeve. In order to get the card to its hidden position, the magician has to push the card up the sleeve of the jacket.

See here for images that might help.