drag up

present singular third person drags up · participle present dragging up · participle past dragged up · past dragged up

1. To remind people of (something, usually unpleasant, from the past).

   I don't know why John had to drag up the incident of the car accident. It was really embarrassing.

   1 more example

   It’s hard to understand how a mother as devoted as Diana would choose, in 1995, to drag up her affair with Hewitt again in her explosive interview with the BBC’s Martin Bashir on Panorama. She knew how devastated her boys had been by their father’s on-camera confession of infidelity with Camilla Parker Bowles in Jonathan Dimbleby’s 1994 ITV documentary, and how truly mortified they felt when Princess in Love came out.

   April 5 2022, Tina Brown, “How Princess Diana’s Dance With the Media Impacted William and Harry”, in Vanity Fair

2. figurativelytransitiveTo educate reluctant pupils.

   "I don't want to spoil any comparison you are going to make," said Jim, "but I was at Winchester and New College." ¶ "That will do," said Mackenzie. "I was dragged up at the workhouse school till I was twelve.[…]"

   1909 September 9, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], chapter II, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC

3. UKfigurativelytransitiveTo raise a child with insufficient discipline or instillment of social etiquette.

   It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up.

   1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak House

4. Of a man: to dress in women's clothing for entertainment.
5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see drag, up.