Word.ws English Dictionary

up the river

up the river prepositional phrase: to prison.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (US, idiomatic) To prison.
    • The former baseball player that Cincinnati idolized is being sent up the river to Ashland, Ky., to serve a prison term for cheating on his taxes.1990 July 21, “Pete Rose: He doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame”, in Dallas Morning News, retrieved 23 Sep 2010

Origin of up the river

A reference to Sing Sing prison, which is located on the Hudson river, to the north of (and upstream from) New York City.

Questions about up the river

What does up the river mean?
Up the river means to prison.
What part of speech is up the river?
Up the river is a prepositional phrase.

Words near up the river in the dictionary

  1. up the gut
  2. up the kyte
  3. up the Oxo Tower
  4. up the pole
  5. up the proverbial
  6. up the river
  7. up the spout
  8. up the stick
  9. up the stump
  10. up the wall
  11. up the walls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: up the river (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 river.ogg.

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