Search it Up

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sophia. I’m calling from Naperville, Illinois, and I’m 13.

Hey, Sophia, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Thank you. Well, I have a question about this term that my sister and I use, and actually some of my friends.

Whenever we’re going to Google something, we always say, let’s search it up.

Let’s search it up on the Internet.

And my mom, who is a speech pathologist, she is always correcting us.

And she’s saying, like, no, it’s not search it up.

It’s look it up.

And so we were wondering, like, is it something that just we say? Is it wrong? And yeah.

How long do you think you’ve been saying search it up?

Honestly, since I can remember.

Okay.

It’s what I’ve said.

And your mom, her protest is it’s not the way that she says it, so she feels like it’s wrong?

Yeah, she says that it’s look it up or just search it, not search it up.

All right.

Well, one nice thing about this show is we have listeners from all over.

And when I search all of our email, our phone calls and stuff, I can find this has come up before.

So I know, even without searching the whole Internet, that you are not alone.

And other people say search it up, too, meaning to look something up on the Internet.

It can sound wrong to somebody’s ears who’s used to phrases like look it up or hunt it up or dig it up.

But it’s new. It’s a new language change.

And I congratulate you on noticing it or your mom for noticing it.

And it is literally used by zillions of people.

Zillion is a really big word.

Well, that’s really. Thank goodness.

But the thing is, it’s language change in motion.

It is language happening right in front of us.

And it does tend to be younger people, typically under the age of, say, mid-20s.

Not always. Obviously, these are just ballpark numbers.

And it definitely is on the model of look it up or read it up or sorry, read up on it or hunt it up or dig it up.

And there’s an interesting thing happening here.

People are bothered, I think, most of all by the it in there.

People are a little less bothered by search up, although that also sounds weird.

But I don’t see that much difference between search for it on the Internet or search it up on the Internet.

It feels like the same the same thing to me, except with one little caveat.

Sophia, I have a question for you.

If you were searching for the answer in a book, would you still say, I’m going to search it up?

I don’t think I would.

I think it depends.

You would say look it up?

Yeah, I would probably say look it up or just try to find it.

I don’t know.

That’s interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, I’m curious because I’ve always had this sense of the Internet being above my head, and I’m pulling things down from it.

Oh, interesting.

Well, I was going to toss in here, there’s something interesting with phrasal verbs where we add a preposition or an adverb after another verb and it kind of changes the meaning.

And so up in verb phrases can have several meanings.

And one of them is bringing something to light or revealing something or presenting something.

Think of dig up, look up, show up, dish up.

And so I think that maybe part of what’s happening here with search it up is you’re not just searching.

You’re also finding things to show.

You’re looking for results.

And then one of those other connotations for up that appears in verb phrases is this sense of thoroughness or completion or finality.

So close up, grow up, hush up, give up, clear up.

All have this notion of a very completed, obviously done action.

And I think that also is coming to play here with search it up.

The up is important in there, and then the it kind of makes it feel a little bit more like look it up.

So it follows on the pattern of look it up.

Yeah, it’s almost like it’s reinforcing it.

I’m thinking about Marc Maron when he tells you to do something on his podcast.

He says, do it up.

Yeah, yeah.

And all he means is do it, but it’s emphatic.

Emphatic, yeah.

Like don’t half-ass this.

Do it thoroughly.

By the way, Sophia, I can find uses of search it up to the mid-2000s, around 2005 or so.

Really?

I have no doubt at all that it’s older than that.

It’s just that I haven’t spent the hours to try to puzzle it out.

Oh, wow.

I was born in 2005, so that kind of makes sense that I started saying it.

Maybe older than you.

Her first words were, search it up, Mama.

Serve it up, anyway.

Sophia, what an interesting question.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for taking the time out of your day.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me on the show.

It was so amazing.

Take care now.

Call us again sometime, okay?

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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