up on one's ear

When you got up on your ear and called me names, and said I had brought you eleven miles to look at a sapling, didn't I explain to you that all the whale-ships in the North Seas had been wooding off of it for more than twenty-seven years?

1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “”, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, →OCLC, page 552

"He's right up on his ear," said Clint gloomily. "If he gets us now he will send us all packing, and don't you doubt it!"

1916, Ralph Henry Barbour, chapter 10, in Left Guard Gilbert

I know a salesman of this sort who will never make his mark, who flares up, "gets up on his ear," as they say, when ever his sensitive, sore spots are touched.

1916, Orison Swett Marden, Selling Things (reprinted in How to Sell without "Selling", Robert C. Worstell ed., 2014), ch. 23 (Google preview)