Word.ws English Dictionary

up the duff

up the duff prepositional phrase: pregnant.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, colloquial, slang) Pregnant.
    • Lynda up the duff—what odds do you put on that, eh, Mr Clever Dick, eh? That's shut his gob. That's put a crease in his brand-new suit.1987, David Leland, Wish You Were Here, spoken by Lynda Mansell (Emily Lloyd)
    • At 19, he was married (‘only because she was up the duff’ he explains gallantly).1994, The Daily Telegraph, quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, page 88, 2nd edition, 2005

Examples of up the duff in a sentence

  • “Well, when he found out that my gran was up the duff, he went back to his native Norway (or it might have been Sweden)[…].”1998, Tracey Ullman, Tracey Takes On..., page 98:
  • It just means that some daft wee hairy that gets knocked up the duff has tae get oan the bus tae Carlisle tae get cleaned oot.1998, Irvine Welsh, Filth, London: Jonathan Cape, →ISBN, page 191:

Origin of up the duff

Unknown; the OED states that the phrase was originally Australian. Possibly related to in the pudding club (duff is a type of pudding) and thus related to dough.

Questions about up the duff

What does up the duff mean?
Up the duff means pregnant.
How do you use up the duff in a sentence?
“Well, when he found out that my gran was up the duff, he went back to his native Norway (or it might have been Sweden)[…].”
What part of speech is up the duff?
Up the duff is a prepositional phrase.

Words near up the duff in the dictionary

  1. up the booai
  2. up the boohai
  3. up the country people
  4. up the creek
  5. up the creek without a paddle
  6. up the duff
  7. up the flume
  8. up the game
  9. up the gut
  10. up the kyte
  11. up the Oxo Tower

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: up the duff (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-up the duff.ogg.

Cite this entry: “up the duff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/up_the_duff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.