Also 9 dial. upkest. [UP- 2. Cf. MDa. opkast in sense 6.]
1. A chance or accident. rare.
1611. Shaks., Cymb., II. i. 2. Was there euer man had such lucke? When I kist the Iacke vpon an vp-cast, to be hit away?
1619. Drayton, Legends, P. Gaveston, cvii. Only some small force … For vs to trust to, Fortune had vs left, On which our Hopes, vpon this Vpcast lay.
1897. Rhoscomyl, White Rose Arno, 131. Pengraig … hoped that he might by some marvellous upcast succeed in overhauling the escaped scoundrel.
2. Sc. and north. dial. A reproach or taunt; a ground or occasion of reproach.
1681. R. Fleming, Fulfilling of Script. (ed. 3), 51. This did never occasion bitter reflexions, or was their upcast before the World.
1681. P. Forman, in Thomson, Cloud of Witnesses (1871), 205. Ye are an upcast to poor sufferers.
1825. Brockett, N. C. Gloss., s.v.
1863. Jean L. Watson, By-gone Days, 124. If she will only come back again, she will never get an upcast frae me nor mine.
1878–. in Eng. Dial. Dict. (Sc., Cumb., N. Irel.).
3. Mining and Geol. An upward dislocation or shifting of a seam or stratum; a fault caused by this. (Cf. UPCAST ppl. a. 3.)
Used in contrast to DOWNCAST or DOWNTHROW.
1793. [Earl Dundonald], Descr. Estate of Culross, 31. The Proprietors … found their Coals after working to a certain depth, thrown up to the north, by an up-cast, as it is commonly called.
1839. Murchison, Silur. Syst., I. xxxvii. 510. The upcasts of the various coalfields.
1842. Sedgwick, in Hudson’s Guide Lakes (1843), 200. A great cleft or ‘fault’ … producing such an enormous ‘upcast’ towards the N.E., that the carboniferous beds … are on the other side of it.
1872. W. S. Symonds, Rec. Rocks, v. 148. The extraordinary upcast of Silurian rocks in Marloes Bay.
4. Upcast shaft (or pit), the pit-shaft by which the ventilating air of a mine is returned to the surface.
1876. [see DOWNCAST sb. 2].
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 987. The air of the upcast pit being rarefied by the heat.
1867. W. W. Smyth, Coal & Coal-mining, 207. If a really large volume of air be required, we must heat the full height of the column in the upcast shaft.
ellipt. 1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 971. Pit of ventilation or upcast for the smoke.
1864. A. Miller, Rise & Progr. Coatbridge, xxv. 169. The air by the downcast is conveyed round the whole of the workings, and guided by air courses to the upcast.
b. A casting or hurling upward; a cast or throw in an upward direction.
1890. Nature, 6 Nov., 16/1. The ‘upcast’ to which the air must be subject in a cyclone.
5. Sc. An upset.
1824. Scott, St. Ronan’s, xxviii. What wi’ the upcast and terror … my head is sair eneugh distressed.
6. Material thrown up in digging, etc.
1883. Whitelaw, Sophocles, Antigone, 250. No mattock’s stroke indeed, Nor spade’s upcast was there.
1891. G. Neilson, Per Lineam Valli, 3. Outside on the north bank of the ditch there lies a vast heap of promiscuous earth, the ‘upcast’ from the trench.
