Dictionary

poker up en · VERB

Meanings

1. To become expressionless; to put on a poker face.
   • Oh, no, pokering up won't wash with me! Formality is simply another fence to cower behind. 2014, Colleen McCullough, Bittersweet, page 366:
   • After nearly choking, Joe cocked a brow over the edge of his coffee cup. “Me?” He pokered up in affront. “I haven't done a damn thing.” 2004, Lori Foster, When Bruce Met Cyn:
   • She pokered up indignantly. He could almost feel the electricity as she searched for a response to his compliment which would put him in his place. 2014, Jeanne Allan, One Husband Needed:
   • When his mama had ventured in the most amiable way to remark on her occasional free and easy ways, he had pokered up at once and declared that it was her very lack of pretension which he found most engaging. 1984, Sheila Walsh, The Diamond Waterfall, page 153:
   • Wicked as the devil one minute, and then pokering up like a Methodist minister the next. 1992, Joan Overfield, The Viscount's Vixen, page 10:
   • He shut the door behind him and leaned back against it, his face pokering up in that relentlessly neutral expression she recognized as his personal take on stubborn . 2006, Terry McLaughlin, Make-believe Cowboy, page 164:

Forms