Meaning & Analysis
An archaic idiom meaning to get one's fill, either by taking a final profit, receiving a satisfying reward, or being silenced by a conclusive (and sometimes unpleasant) offering.
Insights
Attainment of Final Profit
The proverb symbolizes the act of securing a final, decisive profit or advantage that brings a matter to a satisfactory close. It represents the culmination of effort, resulting in personal gain and contentment.
Culmination of a Scheme
It can represent the completion of a plan or scheme, not always for good. The 1607 quotation 'Vntill the mouth of mischeife be made vp' extends the metaphor to mean bringing a malicious design to its full and final realization.
Forced Conclusion or Silencing
In a more confrontational sense, the phrase can mean to be silenced or decisively shut down. The earliest quote from 1546, involving 'chokyng oystters', illustrates that 'making up the mouth' can imply being given a final, unanswerable retort that ends the conversation.
Economic and Social Context
The proverb's emergence in the 16th century, a period of economic expansion and social change, grounds it in a culture increasingly focused on individual enrichment. Its frequent association with acquiring money or goods, as seen in the cross-reference 'To feather one's nest', reflects the acquisitive spirit of the age.
Psychological Symbolism
Using the mouth—the organ for both consumption and speech—as a metaphor for financial gain or finality reveals a deep psychological link between oral satisfaction and a sense of security or completion. This connection highlights a primal understanding of wealth as a form of satiation.
Moral Ambiguity
The phrase's meaning shifts with context, from the positive sense of achieving a desired profit to the negative implication of being silenced with an unpleasant 'final course', as in Heywood's 1546 quotation. This duality reflects a moral ambiguity toward ambition and gain.
Linguistic History
Now archaic, this idiom exemplifies the rich use of bodily metaphors in Early Modern English to convey complex abstract ideas. It captures a tangible, physical sense of finality, whether in securing wealth, completing a scheme, or ending a debate.
Rhetorical Devices
Idiom
The entire phrase is an idiom, where the collective meaning—to gain a final satisfaction or profit—is non-literal and culturally specific to its historical period.
Metaphor
The 'mouth' serves as a potent metaphor for appetite, desire, and completion. 'Making it up' metaphorically signifies the act of satisfying that appetite, whether for wealth, food, or a conclusive outcome.
Sensory Imagery
The proverb relies on sensory imagery related to taste and satiation to convey abstract concepts like financial gain and finality, making the idea more vivid and relatable.
Transcription
Quotations
His wyfe to make vp my mouthe .. deuiseth to cast in my teeth, Checks and chokyng oysters.
Surveyors there be, that greedily gorge up their covetous goods .. all such as survey, they make up their mouths, but the commons be utterly undone by them.
And now ys the tyme come .. een to make vp my mouth, and to feather my neste.
Sometime she gaue me mony store, to bye me what I would. Thus making vp my mouth.
Thus doth one hideous act succeed an other, Vntill the mouth of mischeife be made vp.
It hath made vp his mouth.
From thence to Ireland where I was a while, But Newport battell that made vp my mouth.
To make up his Mouth, shall go away with an Opinion of an hundred several foul Errors in John Calvin.
Thy mother .. would have made a hard shift to have sat at the upper end of my Lord Neander's Table, to have had occasion to have made up a fine Mouth.
Cross References
- N125-6 To feather one's nest.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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