stitch up v.
1. to beat up.
‘There’s Nothing Like a Spree at Night’ in Convivialist in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) IV 13: Jemmy Jumps, the tailor boy, no man like him can use a goose, / Is striving if he cannot stiutch up Tom the Cobler’s [sic] eyes. | ||
Mystery Bay Blues 237: To see him get stitched up like that, it was music to our eyes. |
2. to cheat someone.
True Colonist (Hobart, Tas.) 18 Jan. 585/3: ‘I have every reason to be grateful to my patron for the many good things he has given me, and for the opportunities he has afforded me of stitching up so many poor devils’. | ||
Only Fools and Horses [TV script] Del – it’s obvious you’re stitching me up. | ‘Big Brother’||
G’DAY 113: He's decided to move to the Gong and work for his brother, stitching up wood ducks in a car yard! | ||
Inside 119: The drug dealers were seething: he’d really stitched them up. | ||
Urban Grimshaw 54: Everyone was on the make, out to stitch her up. | ||
Life 203: Tony was a good mate of mine, but he used to stitch me up. | ||
Adventures of the Honey Badger [ebook] [B]eing heavily hassled by 108 taxi drivers all battling to see who would get to stitch the foreigner up with their cab fare. | ||
New European 25-31 Jan. 14: [headline] Will Macron Stitch Us Up? |
3. (UK Und./police) of the police, to incriminate a person in order to ensure a conviction by planting evidence, faking confessions etc.; also in non-police use.
Sir, You Bastard 127: Your confederate has just about stitched you up. | ||
Auf Wiedersehen Pet Two 232: You couldn’t have stitched me up better. | ||
(con. 1964-65) Sex and Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll 70: ‘You’re not gunna stitch me up with another fuckin’ lag’. | ||
Guardian Sport 2 Oct. 16: A quick interview with one of the hyenas from the papers, stitching up a fellow pro. | ||
NZEJ 13 36: stitch up v. To fabricate evidence in order to secure a conviction. | ‘Boob Jargon’ in||
Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 178/2: stitch up v. to secure a conviction using fabricated evidence. | ||
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress 81: Stitching up the Boy Poet puts me in cracking form. | ||
Glorious Heresies 161: I’m thinking maybe she’s stitched you up to stitch me up [...] but I had nothing to do with your fella going walkabout. | ||
Braywatch 121: This Roderdic Grainger sham is godda stitch Cheerlie up. |
4. to complete a task to one’s total satisfaction.
DSUE (8th edn) 1157/2: since ca. 1970. |
5. (also stitch) to place in one’s power.
Hell on Hoe Street 154: ‘He stitched me.’ ‘Like a fucking truss, Nicky. His price.’. | ||
Kill Your Friends (2009) 13: What meetings are very good for, however, is stitching people up —undermining, belittling and humiliating them. |