Meanings
- informalAt a loss, puzzled, in a bind.
Manager Dahlen said that Callahan and Stengel were so evenly matched that he was "up a stump" trying to pick between them.
1984, Robert W. Creamer, Stengel: His Life and Times, Bison Books, published 1996, →ISBN, page 673 more examples
GEO. Why it's got to. Suppose we wandered out of it and took a chance at the language on our own responsibility, where the nation would we be? Up a stump, that's where. Our only safety is in sticking like wax to the text.
1892, Mark Twain, Meisterschaft: In Three Acts, act II, scene I, page 181Whereas your ordinary middle-ranking persons, they never had the least notion of what it was, so naturally they were up a stump every time they come across it, you see.
1996, Mendel Mokher Sefarim, Dan Miron, & Ken Frieden, Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler, Fishke the Lame and Benjamin the Third, Schocken Books, →ISBN, page 243In fact, Darwin was unable to decide on a suitable present, telling his roommate that he was up a stump about what to get for his sister and new brother-in-law.
2009, Kent Freeland, A Street Called Darwin, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 54Synonyms: in trouble, up the stump
Synonyms & antonyms
prepositional phraseAt a loss, puzzled, in a bind.
Cite this entry
up a stump. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/up%20a%20stump
“up a stump.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/up%20a%20stump. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “up a stump,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/up%20a%20stump.
Source: up a stump on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.