Thanks to Bill for the corpus search. I've copied below the OED entry for "keep it up," tracing it back to the early 16th c.
1513 MORE in Grafton Chron. (1568) II. 778 For his dissimulation onely kept all that mischiefe up. 1711 STEELE Spect. No. 51 {page}2 The Difficulty of keeping up a sprightly Dialogue for five Acts together. 1752 J. MILLWARD Let. in M. M. Verney Verney Lett. (1930) II. II. xxxiv. 250 When they [sc. the Welsh] get in liquor they are very troublesome and noisy. They kept it up all night. 1781 Hist. Eur. in Ann. Reg. 16/1 Continual firing..was kept up during the day. 1788 GROSE Dict. Vulgar T. (ed. 2), To keep it up, to prolong a debauch. We kept it up finely last night; metaphor drawn from the game at shuttlecock. 1801 C. KEITH Har'st Rig. & Farmer's Ha' (ed. 2) 62 Clear-blooded health..flees awa' frae keeping 't up, and midnight riot. 1810 M. VAN H. DWIGHT Journey to Ohio (1912) 16 The men dress much better{em}they put on their best cloaths on sunday,..& 'keep it up' as they call it. 1837 DICKENS Pickw. lii. 565 We were keeping it up pretty tolerably at the Stump last night, and I'm rather out of sorts this morning. 1869 FREEMAN Norm. Conq. III. xiv. 367 The fight is kept up till night-fall. 1874 L. TROUBRIDGE Life amongst Troubridges (1966) 76 There were forty-six people and we kept it up till one... I had several good valses. 1890 Lippincott's Mag. Jan. 11 He and I have kept up a correspondence. 1958 A. HUXLEY Let. 11 Jan. (1969) 842 Thank you for your long and very interesting letter{em}written, too, in the most wonderfully black ink... Keep it up!
A couple of interesting usages and a pithy comment on the Welsh.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 4:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The "keep it up" construction
Julie --
I realize you probably meant that last part as a rhetorical question, but it made me curious (and I'm supposed to be doing some work that's avoidance-triggering-y).
I can't speak to the origins of the expression, but I did a quick check of the Corpus of Historical American English
(http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/) and found at least one example from 1832 that seems to be using it in its modern idiomatic sense (" Whoop! Whoop!
let him have it! -- sing out! -- keep it up, Flower! " " Wilful! you rascal, " cried Ned"; from John P. Kennedy's _Swallow Barn_). COHA doesn't go pre-1800, so the lack of search hits before that doesn't signify anything; given the "age" of its component parts, it may have been around for a very long time. From the COHA sample, though, there seems to be a pattern with only a few hits in the early 1800s and then a marked increase in the 1860-1900 stretch. That may just reflect changing attitudes about the use of colloquialisms in print, however.
COHA, and COCA (...Contemporary American), make great classroom resources, by the way (I know, I've posted something to that effect before, but it's true, and I think these resources are underused).
Searching for fixed expressions (say, if you want to look at changes in how people use the word 'relatable') is straightforward; the fancier stuff (like wildcards, etc.) is there to be used but you don't *have* to use it to check simple things. If you do over ten searches, you need to register, but it's free (I *think* the registration is so that Mark Davies, the linguist who runs the sites, can put the numbers into requests for funding).
--- Bill Spruiell
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Julie Nichols
Sent: Monday, August 09, 2010 1:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Teaching English Grammar
I too teach first-year comp, and I wish I could sit in on your classes, Eduard! I second Bud's comment that
"...the more people who are discussing language issues, the better off we all are. When I have the time to read and think about these posts, I can learn something new. That is a good thing. I vote that we stay together."
Thanks for all the interesting posts on the history of the language as well as the technical names for, and development of thought about, the grammatical constructions in English and other languages. All of this is fascinating to me, a fiction writer and professor of creative writing.
Let's keep it up! (Now where did THAT construction come from?!)
Best to all,
Julie J. Nichols, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of English and Literature
Utah Valley University MS 153
800 West University Parkway
Orem UT 84058
801-863-6795
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