Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. tense, nervous, annoyed.

1934		J.M. Cain Postman Always Rings Twice (1985) 190: I’m getting up tight now. [Ibid.] 192: I’m up awful tight, now. I think they give you dope in the grub, so you don’t think about it.
1949		H. Ellson Duke 83: I was all tight.
1952		W.R. Burnett Vanity Row 38: ‘Just that ride in would have given most guys fits—not counting the girl. It gave me fits. I’m still all tight’.
1967–8		Baker et al. CUSS 210: Tight Tense at the last minute.
1968		T. Wolfe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1969) 20: Something’s getting up tight, there’s bad vibrations and he wants to break it up.
1977		E. Bunker Animal Factory 16: I’m uptight. I never thought I’d miss a man so much.
1988		Ice-T ‘Radio Suckers’ 🎵 They realize you gotta get some people uptight.
1991		in J. Breslin Damon Runyon (1992) 9: You are as tight as a man who has to fight Joe Louis. I insist you have a drink.
1999		Observer 4 July 23: I didn’t handle it well. I became edgy and uptight.
2000		H. Dowd ‘Crazy Summer’ 🌐 You have to relax a bit Don, we are going to be staying with Aunt Elaine for the next two months and you can’t stay this uptight all that time.
2000		G. Pelecanos Shame the Devil 287: ‘You look a little tight, too.’ ‘Got a minor problem, is all it is.’.
2012		J. Fagan Panopticon (2013) 216: You’re all uptight cos you’re a virgin. You’re fanny’s depressed.
2012		M. Lacher On the Bro’d 204: These fuckers [...] they suck. They’re all uptight about shit.
2023		C. Reithauser Mysteries of the Great City 19: ‘You’re being very uptight. Relax’.

2. formal, unbending, strait-laced.

1963		A. Baron Lowlife (2001) 34: She was cold and uptight.
1971		J. Mandelkau Buttons 18: 130 cases of beer are mysteriously ripped off from an uptight catering firm.
1975		L. Rosten Dear ‘Herm’ 90: They are too up-tight – I mean Daddy and Mom.
1989		M. Dibdin Tryst 8: In Brighton she had been quite prepared to smoke a little grass [...] but she had always drawn the line at harder stuff. But on the West Coast, this attitude was labelled ‘up-tight.’.
1999		Guardian Guide 19–25 June 4: The original uptight white guy.
2000		Guardian Rev. 12 May 6: In the uptight, grey-flannel post-Eisenhower era.

3. under emotional control.

1969		Current Sl. III:4 10: Uptight, adj. Inhibited.
1971		Ellis & Newman ‘Six Ghetto Roles’ in Leacock Culture of Poverty (1971) 312: All respondents agreed that it is desirable, good, and necessary to be ‘cool’ (unemotional), have ‘smarts’ (intelligence), possess ‘heart’ (courage), to have many ‘partners’ (close friends), to be able to influence others, and to be able to keep the situation ‘uptight,’ i.e., in control.
1980		(con. 1940s–60s) H. Huncke ‘Joseph Martinez’ in Eve. Sun Turned Crimson (1998) 220: I kept myself uptight to keep from smashing something over their heads.