act up

Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Financial, Acronyms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

act up

1. Of a person, to behave poorly or inappropriately. If you act up in class, you will be sent to the principal's office. Joe never acts up—he's always so serious. Why do you have detention? Please tell me you weren't acting up again.

2. Of a thing, to malfunction or operate incorrectly. My car's transmission started acting up during my commute to work. My phone acted up again this morning; I think I need to take it to a professional. Why does this blender keep acting up? Do I have it on the wrong setting or something?

3. Of a medical condition, to become problematic or troublesome, usually after a period of remission. Jake played football with his friends today, and now his old knee injury is acting up. It's springtime, so of course my allergies are acting up again. Where's the heating pad? My sciatica's acting up again.

See also: act, up

act up

[for a thing or a person] to behave badly. This car is acting up again.

See also: act, up

act up

1. Misbehave. For example, With an inexperienced rider, this horse always acts up. [c. 1900]

2. Malfunction, as in I'm not sure what's wrong with my car, but the transmission is acting up. In both usages up means "abnormally."

See also: act, up

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

act up

1. To misbehave: The driver stopped the school bus because the kids were acting up.

2. To cause problems by operating strangely or unexpectedly: The thermostat suddenly started acting up, and now it's always too hot or too cold in here.

3. To become active or troublesome after a period of operating normally: My knee starts acting up when the weather is cold.

See also: act, up

See also:

References in periodicals archive ?

Where Right To Try discourse invokes the constitution, ACT UP combined more accessible moral language and values with bioethical and regulatory discourses, reinforcing rather than undercutting the FDA's regulatory function.

The Dangers of Magical Thinking: Situating Right to Try Laws, Patient Rights, and The Language of Advocacy

Still, one of act up's most significant protests took place in October 1988 at the FDA.

Acting up: a new history of aids activism during the plague years

ACT UP had been around and making news for two years before my folly collided with their reality in September 1989.

Don't mourn, organize: Joe Hill's children. (Book Review)

Through Health GAP and GTAC, ACT UP has built alliances within the antiglobalization movement.

ACT UP Goes Global : AN EARLY US AIDS GROUP EMPLOYS DIRECT ACTION TO OPPOSE INJUSTICE EVERYWHERE

The impetus for the street theater tactics for which ACT UP would become known originated in two spheres committed to social justice: public protest and traditional theater.

Bearing witness and taking action: audiences and morality in renaissance tragedy and activist street theater

"It was real." In many ways--in their teaching, writing, activism, and artmaking--those interviewed seemed to feel that ACT UP supplied meaning to everything they had done since, because they had had the experience of working collectively on something "utterly urgent, completely improvised, totally responsive and nimble [and] highly intelligent," said Tom Kalin.

Lest We Forget

Contrary to this perspective, I propose that Earth First!, ACT UP, and Queer Nation's tactics are arguments in their own right and that their bodies are central to the force of their arguments.

Unruly arguments: the body rhetoric of Earth First!, ACT UP, and Queer Nation

Up to now, that distinction has been the basis for ACT UP's militant critique of what it calls the government's "murderous" inaction on AIDS.

Empowerment or co-optation?

ROBERT VAZQUEZ: I remember that well, because I was at-large representative from the floor of ACT UP, and I would hear discussions about Gran Fury: "Every other committee of ACT UP is open; why is it that with Gran Fury we don't know who they are and their membership is closed?" It was counterintuitive for the ACT UP membership to have a closed group.

Gran Fury talks to Douglas Crimp. ('80s Then)

In the heart of San Francisco's Castro district, where I live, the ACT UP logo itself has so much cachet, offers such tangible proof of one's membership in a snugly insular klatch of one's peers, that it has become the Gucci or Calvin Klein designer label of the 1990s, a clubbish insignia that announces cliquishness rather than political conviction.

AIDS Demo Graphics

At an early ACT UP rally, he stood in the rain, reading to a crowd from a soggy piece of paper.

My Postmodernism. (My '80s)

regulates all these options and is thus, according to ACT UP, "at the crux of virtually every issue concerning treatments for AIDS." Jim Eigo, a member of the ACT UP issues committee and one of the principal architects of the organization's demands, says the central problem is that "the F.D.A.

Battling the F.D.A.: AIDS movement seizes control

1987 Larry Kramer and several hundred other activists found the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), an organization that transforms the ways in which lesbian and gay protest occurs and leaves an indelible mark on the epidemic by radicalizing activism.

Innovation through the ages

Keith Haring begins sketching his artwork on ad boards in New York City subway stations, Within a few years he is heralded as one of the leading young artists of his lime, Before his death from AIDS complications in 1990, he becomes an AIDS activist, contributing artwork to fund ACT UP's mission.

Take a Wilde RIDE

ACT UP is down to a handful of chapters and members, but its old fire still smolders