up-stairs

See also: up stairs and upstairs

English

Adverb

up-stairs (comparative further up-stairs, superlative furthest up-stairs)

1. Archaic form of upstairs.
   • 1841 February–November, Charles Dickens, “Barnaby Rudge”, in Master Humphrey’s Clock, volume III, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, chapter 42, page 180:

     In another moment the locksmith was standing in the street, whence he could see that the light once more travelled up-stairs, and soon returning to the room below, shone brightly through the chinks in the shutters.

   • [1872], [Emma Boultwood], “At Fernfield Hall”, in Maggie’s Message, London: The Religious Tract Society;  […], page 55:

     “Well, we must find out Mr. Frank’s address to-morrow, and you must write and tell him all about it,” said his wife, and taking up the jug of milk she had come to fetch, she went up-stairs. But the next minute she came flying down again. “John, run for the doctor directly,” she said; “that poor thing is dying, I do believe. Go up and call Molly,” she said as she went up-stairs again.

   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 200, column 2:

     Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some clerk I suppose,—there must have been clerks in the business, though the house was as still as a house in a city of the dead,—came from somewhere up-stairs, and led me forth.