tits-up

Maybe she knows you and Mary will be taking her home, and that by next week she'll be sleeping under the cool green branches of a giant cedar tree instead of tits-up in some dusty cornfield.

1998, Anna Linzer, Ghost Dancing, Picador, page 39

Next thing he remembered was blanking out, and waking to find himself tits-up in the S&P pit, a forest of undulating legs roiling around him.

1999, Stephen Rhodes, The Velocity of Money: A Novel of Wall Street, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., page 253

Yeomanry . . . militia forces. . . do I not make major-general by this time next year, I've either gone tits-up. . . or wasn't really tryin'!

2000, Dewey Lambdin, King's Captain: An Alan Lewrie Naval Adventure, St. Martin's Press, page 66

The two women were naked except for their wigs and their gartered stockings. They both lay tits-up on the floor, facing André and Clinton.

2005, Lucia St. Clair Robson, Shadow Patriots, Tor/Forge, page 215

Mary said that seventy percent of new businesses failed within the first six months. Another twenty percent went tits-up within the year.

2005, Bill Fitzhugh, Pest Control, HarperCollins, page 46