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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

up the duff en · ADP

Pronunciation

Etymology

Unknown; the OED states that the phrase was originally Australian. Possibly related to in the pudding club (duff is a type of pudding) and thus related to dough.

Meanings

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, colloquial, slang) Pregnant.
    • “Well, when he found out that my gran was up the duff, he went back to his native Norway (or it might have been Sweden)[…].” 1998, Tracey Ullman, Tracey Takes On..., page 98:
    • Lynda up the duff—what odds do you put on that, eh, Mr Clever Dick, eh? That's shut his gob. That's put a crease in his brand-new suit. 1987, David Leland, Wish You Were Here, spoken by Lynda Mansell (Emily Lloyd):
    • It just means that some daft wee hairy that gets knocked up the duff has tae get oan the bus tae Carlisle tae get cleaned oot. 1998, Irvine Welsh, Filth, London: Jonathan Cape, →ISBN, page 191:
    • The great coalface of fuckwits; the fly-by-nighters, who do their five years in Bondi, befriend a Roosters player, get a good coke dealer, meet some tight westie bitch who′s moved here while she works a job in PR, they fall in love, she gets up the duff and then they have to buy a house in Condell Park and they′re gone[…]. 2008, Sam de Brito, The Lost Boys, page 14:
    • At 19, he was married (‘only because she was up the duff’ he explains gallantly). 1994, The Daily Telegraph, quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, page 88, 2nd edition, 2005: