dragging up

Verb

drag up (third-person singular simple present drags up, present participle dragging up, simple past and past participle dragged up)

1. To remind people of (something, usually unpleasant, from the past).
   • I don't know why John had to drag up the incident of the car accident. It was really embarrassing.
2. (figuratively, transitive) To educate reluctant pupils.
   • "I don't want to spoil any comparison you are going to make," said Jim, "but I was at Winchester and New College." ¶ "That will do," said Mackenzie. "I was dragged up at the workhouse school till I was twelve.[…]"1909 September 9, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], chapter II, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC
3. (UK, figuratively, transitive) To raise a child with insufficient discipline or instillment of social etiquette.
   • It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up.1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak House
4. Of a man: to dress in women's clothing for entertainment.
5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see drag, up.