up sticks

present singular third person ups sticks · participle present upping sticks · participle past upped sticks · past upped sticks · alternative up stick

1. IrelandUKslangnauticalTo put up the mast of a ship in preparation for sailing.
2. IrelandUKcolloquialfigurativelyTo prepare to move; to pack up; to go and live in a different place.

   There are too many examples of successful entrepreneurs who have upped sticks and gone elsewhere.

   2013 February 2, “If in doubt, innovate”, in The Economist, archived from the original on 18 Mar 2016

   5 more examples

   Both of these conquered more and more of India, till at length the Rajput city of Delhi was captured, and then the disgusted Rajputs ‘upped sticks’ and fled before Islam and the Turk, and finally settled amid the inaccessible mountains and jungles and occasional fertile valleys of what is known as Rajputana or Rajasthan.

   1934, George Fletcher MacMunn, The Living India: Its Romance and Realities, London: George Bell & Sons, →OCLC, page 17

   If a doctor had to do an operation in a sailing ship, you upped sticks and went before the wind, he said.

   1945, James Lansdale Hodson, The Sea and the Land: Being some Account of Journeys, Meetings, and What Was Said to Me in Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Holland between March 1943 and May 1945, London: Victor Gollancz, →OCLC, page 24

   Once she starts playing that infernal instrument all hours of the day and night, she can think of nothing else and sooner or later she ups sticks and is gone.

   2012, Jane Rusbridge, Rook, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 154

   For such a strategy to work we needed thousands of contractors to up sticks and leave and I never thought that was going to happen.

   2012 November 2, Philip Ross, Freedom to Freelance: Beginning the Fight against IR35, 3rd edition, [Raleigh, N.C.]: Lulu, →ISBN, page 158

   For Paddy Groggy, upping sticks and moving elsewhere wasn't a viable option at this stage in his life.

   2014, William Forde, “Author's Foreword”, in The Life and Times of Joe Walsh (Tales from Portlaw; 8), [s.l.]: William Forde, published July 2016, →ISBN, page 12