Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to be killed or hanged, to die, to be done for; esp. in phr. to be gone up.

[1695		Congreve Love for Love II i: Sirrah, you’ll be hanged. I shall live to see you go up Holborn Hill].
1825		J. Neal Brother Jonathan III 233: The boy, whose narrow escape, when his brother spy ‘went up’ [...] was quite a ‘murigle’.
1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 171: Well, he spelt it, putting in a ph and a th and a gh and a h, and I don’t know what all, and I thought he was gone up the first pop.
1867		W.H. Dixon New America I 132: Gone up, in the slang of Denver, means gone up a tree [...]. In plain English, the man is said to have been hung [DA].
1936		L. Pound ‘American Euphemisms for Dying’ in AS XI:3 200: Go up.

2. to be unavailable (through lack of funds).

1865

Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 107/2: With several worthies of the ‘crook’ [...] ‘lumbering’ and ‘whispering’ was the only means left by which they could raise the wind. The wind was gone up.

3. (US) to be ruined, to be destroyed, to become bankrupt.

1864		Index 2 June 343/1: Soon after the blockade many thought that we [Confederates] should ‘go up’ on the salt question — couldn’t salt our meat, and should be starved into subjection [DA].
1892		Stevenson & Osbourne Wrecker xvi 248: We’ve rather bad news for you [...] Your firm’s gone up [DA].
1896		H. Blossom Checkers 183: The First National Bank of Little Rock has gone up – busted.

4. to become explosively angry.

1899		W.J. Kountz Billy Baxter’s Letters 77: Jim, you should have seen Alice go up!
1914		Sport (Adelaide) 3 July 4/3: Elsie H. went up like an aeroplane when she saw her name coupled with H.R .
1934		Wodehouse Right Ho, Jeeves 54: I shall have to tell him soon about losing all that money at baccarat, and when I do, he will go up like a rocket.
1934		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Young Manhood in Studs Lonigan (1936) 358: Fran would be sore, and go up, Jesus, like a balloon.

5. (US) to surrender one’s money in a hold-up.

1926

J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 150: If I had him on a dark street I wouldn’t hesitate to ‘throw him up’ and he would ‘go up’ too, but he would never stand for it with others looking on.

6. (Aus. und.) to suffer a policer raid.

1967

K. Tennant Tell Morning This 91: ‘You don’t think I want this place going up just when I’m all set to move out’.