Johnson, the language blog of The Economist, follows up on the latest On Language column about the expression “man up.”
BEN ZIMMER has a great piece in the New York Times on the inexorable rise of the phrasal verb to man up. He traces its history from innocuous origins as an elongated version of the non-phrasal transitive to man (ie, “to supply with manpower”), through a stint as a technical American-football term relating to man-to-man defence, to today’s imperative man up! with its gamut of meanings ranging from “don’t be a sissy” to “do the right thing; be a mensch.”
Read the rest here.