Get-up

subs. (colloquial).—1.  Dress; constitution and appearance; disguise. See GET-UP, verb, sense 1.

  1856.  WHYTE-MELVILLE, Kate Coventry, ch. xiv. Is that killing GET UP entirely for your benefit, John? I asked.

  1865.  G. A. SALA, A Trip to Barbary, ch. x. Altogether the GET UP of a Mauresque en promenade is livelier and smarter than that of a Turkish woman.

  1866.  G. ELIOT, Felix Holt, ch. xii. The graceful, well-appointed Mr. Christian, who sneered at Scales about his GET UP, having to walk back to the house with only one tail to his coat.

  1882.  Graphic, 9 Dec., p. 643, c. 2. Comic GETS UP, which will make the house roar presently, are elaborated with the business air of a judge in banc, or a water-rate collector.

  1889.  Mirror, 26 Aug., p. 2, c. 1. I cannot, however, congratulate F. C. G. on his sketch of Blowitz; it isn’t much like the great man, and the GET UP is quite too absurd.

  1890.  Daily Telegraph, 25 Feb., p. 7, col. 7. Dressed as a copurchic, and, giving himself out as an Italian count—thinking to entrap some Transatlantic heiress by his title, fascinating appearance, and gorgeous GET UP.

  Verb. phr. (colloquial).—(1) To prepare (a part, a paper, a case); (2) to arrange (a concert); (3) to dress (as GOT UP REGARDLESS, TO THE NINES, TO THE KNOCKER, TO KILL, WITHIN AN INCH OF ONE’S LIFE); (4) to disguise (as a sailor, a soldier, Henry VIII., a butcher, a nun). See also GET INTO.

  1828.  L. HUNT, Essays (Camelot ed.), p. 13. The pocket-books that now contain any literature are GOT UP, as the phrase is, in the most unambitious style.

  1856.  WHYTE-MELVILLE, Kate Coventry, ch. xviii. Three very gentleman-like, good-looking men, GOT UP to the utmost extent of hunting splendour.

  1864.  B. HEMYNG, Eton School Days, ch. xviii., p. 207. He felt confident in his power of ‘GETTING UP’ so that no one would recognise him.

  1866.  New York Home Journal, Jan. While that admirable old dame, Nature, has been strangely neglectful of much which might be conducive to our comfort, she has GOTTEN UP, REGARDLESS OF EXPENSE, a few articles which are good for some purposes, as the witty Hood has told us.

  1871.  London Figaro, 11 March. It is got up very much in the style of the Paris journals, and is very inferior compared with any respectable journal in England.

  1889.  Polytechnic Magazine, 24 Oct., p. 261. He came specially GOT UP in piebald trousers.

  1892.  CHEVALIER, ‘The Little Nipper.’