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ImageSMART TALK

by Dr. Viva Palaver




OPEN UP: At a recent staff meeting in Strunk Hall, we wondered why "up" can appear after so many verbs when the speaker intends no feeling of direction, and sometimes not even a sense of increase. As staff psychologist, I'm working on a paper about this. It's the kind of discussion that interests therapists at the Center for English as a First Language.

We classify fill up, rise up, stack up, and swell up as impairments because each is redundant. Up adds nothing to the meaning of these verbs. It serves only to reinforce the idea of increase already implied in each verb's meaning. Like running the water during tooth brushing, it makes a scintilla of sense, no more.

But open up? Why open up anything? How does up help here? Sign up, wrap up, clean up, and wash up also puzzle us.

A good way to test a redundancy for silliness is to use a modifier or prefix that means the opposite. Thus postarrange demonstrates that prearrange is pretentious and ignorant. So try adding the antonym to up, and notice how dumb open down sounds. Therefore, open up has no usefulness. Why do cops, gangsters, and millions of citizens engaged in calmer pursuits think it does? Or are they thinking?

Please don't shut up. If any readers have theories about the origin or reason for the superfluous use of up, please write to the Center, care of this publication. I'll add your theory to my paper, and unlike many academic writers, will give you credit.

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