Word.ws English Dictionary

up what spring

up what spring phrase: what the hell are you saying?

Phrase

up what spring

  1. (Hong-Kong, colloquial, slightly vulgar) What the hell are you saying?
    • 相反，好諷刺地，一句Grammar全對嘅句子，有時反而唔知佢Up what spring，例如日文偽文青廢Up系列：「在非洲,每隔一分鐘，就有六十秒過去⋯⋯」2017, 港語日報 [KONGISH DAILY] (overall work in Cantonese), →ISBN
    Synonyms:
    up mud spring, up mud 9, up what 9

Synonyms of up what spring

  • up mud spring
  • up mud 9
  • up what 9

Origin of up what spring

Partial calque of Cantonese 噏乜春 (ngap¹ mat¹ ceon¹, “what the hell are you babbling about”, literally “what testicles are you babbling about”), where 春 (ceon¹) is a homograph meaning both “testicles” and “spring (season)”. By surface analysis, Cantonese up + what + spring.

Questions about up what spring

What does up what spring mean?
Up what spring means what the hell are you saying?
What part of speech is up what spring?
Up what spring is a phrase.

Words near up what spring in the dictionary

  1. up to the nines
  2. up to the tonsils
  3. up to time
  4. up top
  5. up until
  6. up what spring
  7. up with the chickens
  8. up with the lark
  9. up with the larks
  10. up your ass
  11. up your nose with a rubber hose

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: up what spring (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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