up sticks

Verb

up sticks (third-person singular simple present ups sticks, present participle upping sticks, simple past and past participle upped sticks)

1. (Ireland, UK, slang) To put up the mast of a ship in preparation for sailing.
2. (Ireland, UK, colloquial, figuratively) To prepare to move; to pack up; to go and live in a different place.
   • 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...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...