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#1 2008-06-23 23:41:51

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

uptick << uptake

The English idiom “to be slow/quick on the uptake” has been around since the early 1800s. The word “uptake” in the context of this idiom means “comprension,” and may have originally come from a Scottish usage.

So what do people mean when they say that they are “slow on the uptick?” Examples:

Blog comment: “i’m a little slow on the uptick on this one, but i still think it warrants a tip of the digital cap.” (http://www.yfly15.com/?feed=rss2)

Blog comment: “I am slow on the uptick and sure this observation has been made of these already-posted photos….but I need to know.” (http://gawker.com/tag/disclosures/?i=39 … ting-whirl)

Blog comment: “Why is METRO so slow on the uptick compared to other more progressive transit agencies? ” (http://blogs.ridemetro.org/blogs/write_ … afety.aspx)

Blog comment: “and the fact that they’re screwing over consumers and being deceptive then they’re not too quick on the uptick apparently. ” (http://consumerist.com/consumer/cell-ph … 320720.php)

There are about two dozen web examples of this uptake/uptick substitution in the context of the “quick/slow on the uptick” idiom.

The word “uptick” is of recent coinage, late twentieth century, and appears to derive from the custom of putting a special mark, a tick (typically a plus sign), in front of stock prices and economic indexes that show rising values. So to be “slow on the uptick” might be to display no awareness, or only a small awareness, of what is happening. Your awareness, in comparison to that of other people, is not rising-it gets no tick on the psychological Big Board.

Last edited by kem (2008-06-23 23:43:39)


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#2 2008-06-24 09:23:40

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: uptick << uptake

Nice eggcorn.

I had never pictured the up-tick as a check-mark in the margin. I always had (perhaps influenced by a clock ticking?) the image of a measuring instrument with a dial, e.g. a pressure gauge, that ticks upwards when the pressure rises by a clearly discernible amount. Interesting how we can do that: get quite different pictures that, in a very important sense, amount to the same thing.

Kem wrote

Your awareness, in comparison to that of other people, is not rising-it gets no tick on the psychological Big Board.

Only it does get a tick, just later than other people’s.

To me the picture that came to mind was not a culture-wide Big Board but a personal one: my Board doesn’t register (with an uptick of whatever sort) a change in what I’m supposed to be aware of/measuring, as quickly as other people’s Boards do.

Does that make sense?

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-06-24 09:33:10)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#3 2008-06-24 09:27:19

nilep
Eggcornista
Registered: 2007-03-21
Posts: 291

Re: uptick << uptake

That is not a change I would have expected. While the technical uptick is used metaphorically to mean improvement “increase” the word seems to be less common than uptake.

Poll Shows Uptick for Bush, Congress.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2007/ … gress.html

January has already seen a sharp uptick in violence, leaving dozens of Iraqi civilians and 20 U.S. soldiers dead since the beginning of the year, with the potential to bring into question the Arizona senator’s credibility if the violence continues at that rate.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/15/mccain/

Both the British National Corpus and the Davies/BYU Corpus of American English show more occurrences of uptake.

BNC
uptake 357
uptick 7

Davies/BYU
uptake 446
uptick 186

Similarly, there are 15.6M raw Google hits for uptake, versus 1.9M for uptick.

Maybe it’s a mistake to look at the whole language, though. Presumably uptick is more commonly used among those who work with stock or commodity markets. Maybe such individuals would actually be more familiar with uptick than uptake?

Last edited by nilep (2008-06-24 09:31:15)

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#4 2008-06-24 10:56:07

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: uptick << uptake

Both uptake and uptick are comparison nouns. They evoke images of one event being selected from a group of similar events.

I’m also puzzled, nilep, as you are, by the apparently reversed slope of familiarity. I would have thought the word “uptake” was more familiar in the general population of English speakers than the word “uptick.” As we have noted before, however, several factors can affect the slope. One is the immediate idomatic context-the meaning of a word in an idiom can be less familiar than the meaning of a word outside the idiom. Another is segregated populations of speakers. Words can get preferential play in some circles. In the case of “uptick,” we may also be looking at a third factor, the colonization factor. Just as viruses go wild when they encounter populations with no native immunity, certain words seem to have a metaphoric potency that makes them explode into the language space. In their rapid expansion they overshoot their natural boundaries and become “pop” words that show up in the strangest places. Estimations of word familiarity can be skewed by this overshoot. In the long run the encyclopedia entry for Paris Hilton will be shorter than the one for Margaret Thatcher, I should think; for now, though, Hilton’s name is the name we conjure with. In the same way, some people believe get bonus points for using the rapidly colonizing “uptick” as much as possible. A fourth factor we have to consider is meaning creep. New meanings of old words can put reverse pressure on old meanings. The word “uptake” has gained a second life in recent years because of its use in medicine and biology (“Uptake” refers to the rate at which chemicals enter into metabolic pathways.). Perhaps the new medical connotations of “uptake” have made the older sense of “uptake” as comprehension seem a little archaic.

Last edited by kem (2008-06-24 18:27:12)


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#5 2008-06-24 19:16:34

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: uptick << uptake

Right on, and well-expressed, Kem.

A variant I just now ran across:

Why is State so slow on the take?

Funny thing is, I was thinking of opening a pretzel shop in Turkey. I guess I am too slow on the take.

Forgive me because I’m a little slow on the take right now.

Dennis Quaid and Willem Dafoe as, respectively, a slow-on-the- take president and his conniving veep.

(3700 raw ghits, 850 quick on the take).

He was smart, witty, and quick on the take without being pedantic which he is prone to sometimes.

Also, included among those hits:

It has been quite slow on the take up but give it time and people will start to use these forums.

the value of social networks and search marketing, why some marketers and agencies are slow on the take-up and even who’s fault that is.

(353 raw ghits, 9 for quick on the t.u.)

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-06-24 19:18:02)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#6 2008-06-25 11:58:41

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: uptick << uptake

I had never thought of the idiom “slow on the take” as a variant of “slow on the uptake.” I guess I thought the word “take” in the idiom was an example of the usage of “take” as interpretation. (“What’s your take on the situation?”). But you may be right-the inclusion of the slow/quick lexeme in the idiom does seem to point toward some association with uptake.

“Take” meaning “interpretation” is a relatively recent addition to English. It might even derive from the sense of “uptake” that has been encoded in the “slow/quick on the uptake” idiom.


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#7 2008-06-25 12:01:52

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: uptick << uptake

Don’t know how relevant it is, but “on the take” to me means receiving bribes, and being slow on the take might mean you didn’t take them as readily as others, or perhaps that you were slower in realizing that one was being offered you.

Anyway, that’s the association that immediately came to my mind when I saw “slow on the take”.


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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