Meaning
To make a real effort to improve your behaviour, work, or performance after falling short; a brisk reprimand or urging to try harder. British and informal, with a schoolmasterly, somewhat old-fashioned tone; usually addressed to the underperformer directly or said about them. American English rarely uses it, preferring shape up or similar. Informal and admonishing; almost always a criticism or warning directed at underperformance. Regional use: British English (clothing origin).
Origin
From the image of smartening a sagging appearance: hitching up drooping socks is the visible part of pulling oneself together. Word Histories traces the figurative sense to British newspapers of the 1880s. The earliest clear example is the Saturday Falkirk Herald and Linlithgow Journal of 14 May 1887, urging a beaten cricket team to pull up your socks; hecklers used the phrase at a turbulent Gosport temperance meeting in 1884, and a music-hall act titled Pull up your socks was advertised in 1881, though that early evidence is ambiguous. By 1906 a Pittsburgh columnist was reporting it as the latest London slang, likened to the American keep your shirt on, confirming it as a British coinage of the 1880s.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- pull one's socks up
- pull up your socks
Usage Examples
- If Jayden wants a place on the senior squad, he will have to pull his socks up before the spring trials.
- The inspector told the school plainly that it needed to pull its socks up on attendance.
- Sales slid after the takeover, so the new director told the team to pull their socks up or expect redundancies.