Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. aware of, knowledgeable about.

1781		G. Parker View of Society II 80: This trick had been once attempted upon a landlord who was a man of the world, and up to their gossip.
1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 136: I was wipe-priging, we made a regular stall for a tick and reader, but the cull was up to us, and we couldn’t do him.
1789		Merry Fellow’s Companion 28: ‘I was down upon him [...] I was up, you see, to all he knew’.
1794		Sporting Mag. Oct. V 79: Make him fly! Get him up.
1802		M. & R. Lovell Edgeworth Essays on Irish Bulls 138: O, my lord, I knew him. I was up to him.
1812		Egan Boxiana I 4: They are not down to the ‘Sublime and Beautiful’ or up to the ‘Diversions of Purley.’.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 63: No man was better up to the rigs of the town; no one better down to the manoeuvres of the flats, and sharps.
1823		N.Y. Statesman 21 June 2/4: The mayor asked witness if Ann took out with her when walking the bootle (slang word for a bundle of forged notes.) Here A. C. [Ann Carter, defendant] laughed and said to the mayor, ‘I see your honor is up to the slang.’.
1835		Duncombe Dens of London 37: Jamie [...] had an eye as sleepy and cunning as a cat; and, to use his low jargon, was ‘up to summat,’ and knew ‘what was what.’.
1841		Flash (NY) 17 Oct. n.p.: Kate, who is up to a thing or two.
1842		Wexford Indep. 30 Nov. 4/1: We’ll just show Sir Robert we’re up to his rigs.
1846		Era (London) 15 Mar. 12/1: He was up, down, and fly, cunning as a Jew, sharp as a razor and quick as an antelope’.
1847		R.F. Walond Paddiana I 96: I’ll be up to ould Lanty, as cute as ye are.
1848		Bell’s Life in Sydney 26 Aug. 1/2: [N]ot being what the young scapegrace Rugbinian would call ‘down,’ or rather, ‘up’ to his slang.
1847		A. Smith Natural History of the Gent 8: He imagined that by addressing his coarse, annoying gallantry to an unprotected girl he was [...] ‘a fast man,’ ‘up to a thing or two’.
1852		Kendal Mercury 17 Apr. 6/1: He vill find his kids vide avake and up to dodges of that sort.
1854		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Mar. 27/2: He pretended to fall of his hoprse. Cannibal [i.e. the horse] was up to the trick.
1855		Bell’s Life in Sydney 8 Dec. 3/1: A non wide-awake personage named John Murphy who was evidently not well up to ‘the time o’ day’ in Sydney, .
1857		in Punch ‘Dear Bill, This Stone-Jug’ 31 Jan. n.p.: But the lark’s when a goney up with us they shut / As ain’t up to our lurks, our flash patter, and smut.
1860		Inquirer (Perth, WA) 28 Nov. 3/6: Nowise shy or timorous, / Up to all that men discuss. / Never mind how scandalous. / Fast young ladies.
1861		T. Hughes Tom Brown at Oxford (1880) 58: A cunning old beggar, the père de famille of the encampment; up to every move on the board.
1877		Five Years’ Penal Servitude 167: Just try to come the hanky-panky and play the old soldier with him and there was no man in Dartmoor Prison more up to every move than the old Marine.
1884		J. Harrison ‘Negro English’ in Anglia VII 265: To be up ter = to be cunniug enough for.
1885		‘’Arry on Song and Sentiment’ in Punch 14 Nov. 229/1: The mugs who write poetry rot [...] they simply ain’t up to wot’s wot.
1893–5		H. Lawson ‘Two Sundowners’ in Roderick (1972) 102: He began to suspect that brummy was up to his little game.
1900		H. Lawson ‘Joe Wilson’s Courtship’ in Roderick (1972) 540: I’m up to all these dodges.
1907		D. Stewart Shadows of the Night in Illus. Police News 10 Aug. 12/4: ‘I’m fly and up ter every move on the board’.
1939		Goodman & Kolodin Kingdom of Swing 198: [W]e finally found people who were up on what we were trying to do .

2. opposed to.

1850

Freeman’s Jrnl (Dublin) 6 July 4/1: Before the murder she told me the master was very cross to her and she would be ‘up to him;’ she said she would get her brothers to murder him.