Word.ws English Dictionary

up a stump

up a stump prepositional phrase: at a loss, puzzled, in a bind.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (informal) At a loss, puzzled, in a bind.
    • GEO. Why it's got to. Suppose we wandered out of it and took a chance at the language on our own responsibility, where the nation would we be? Up a stump, that's where. Our only safety is in sticking like wax to the text.1892, Mark Twain, Meisterschaft: In Three Acts, act II, scene I, page 181
    • Manager Dahlen said that Callahan and Stengel were so evenly matched that he was "up a stump" trying to pick between them.1984, Robert W. Creamer, Stengel: His Life and Times, Bison Books, published 1996, →ISBN, page 67

Examples of up a stump in a sentence

  • Whereas your ordinary middle-ranking persons, they never had the least notion of what it was, so naturally they were up a stump every time they come across it, you see.1996, Mendel Mokher Sefarim, Dan Miron, & Ken Frieden, Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler, Fishke the Lame and Benjamin the Third, Schocken...
  • In fact, Darwin was unable to decide on a suitable present, telling his roommate that he was up a stump about what to get for his sister and new brother-in-law.2009, Kent Freeland, A Street Called Darwin, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 54:

Synonyms of up a stump

Questions about up a stump

What does up a stump mean?
Up a stump means at a loss, puzzled, in a bind.
How do you use up a stump in a sentence?
Whereas your ordinary middle-ranking persons, they never had the least notion of what it was, so naturally they were up a stump every time they come across it, you see.
What part of speech is up a stump?
Up a stump is a prepositional phrase.

Words near up a stump in the dictionary

  1. up a creek
  2. up a creek without a paddle
  3. up a gum tree
  4. up a height
  5. up a storm
  6. up a stump
  7. up a tree
  8. up above
  9. up against
  10. up against it
  11. up against the ropes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: up a stump (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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