Upsee-Dutch.

A heavy Dutch beer; Upsee Freese a Friesland strong ale; Upsee English, a strong English ale. Upsee Dutch also means tipsy, stupid with drink.

“I do not like the dulness of your eye,

It hath a heavy cast; ʹtis upsee-Dutch,

And says you are a lumpish whoremaster.”


Ben Jonson: The Alchemist, iv. 4.


“Yet whoop, Barnaby! off with thy liquor,

Drink upsees out, and a fig for the vicar.”


Sir Walter Scott: Lady of the Lake, vi. 5.


“Teach me how to take the German upsy freeze, the Danish rouser the Switzer’s stoop of Rhenish.”—Dekker: Gull’s Hornbook (1609).

previous entry · index · next entry

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

Up the Spout
Up to Snuff
Up to the Hub
Up to the Mark
Up-turning of his Glass
Upas-tree or Poison-tree of Macassar
Upper Crust
Upper Storey
Upper Ten Thousand or The Upper Ten
Uproar
Upsee-Dutch
Upset Price
Urbi et Orbi [To Rome and the rest of the world]
Urd [The Past]
Urda or Urdan Fount (The)
Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda
Urgan
Urganda la Desconecida
Urgel
Uriah
Uriel