- up
- \ \ [OE] Up is part of a widespread family of Germanic adverbs which also includes German auf, Dutch and Danish op, and Swedish upp. It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *up-, which also produced English over and the prefixes hyper- and super- and may lie behind English evil. To open something is etymologically to put it ‘up’.\ \ Cf.⇒ OPEN, OVER
Word origins - 2ed. J. Ayto. 2005.