work up
v. phr.— «One day, as Dr. Meador tells it, a doctor-in-training was asked by his professor to define a well person. The resident thought for a moment. A well person, he said, is “someone who has not been completely worked up.”» —“If You’ve Got a Pulse, You’re Sick” by Gina Kolata New York Times May 21, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Diamond dust, tapioca snow, and sugar icebergs — a 1955 glossary of arctic and subarctic terms describes the environment in ways that sound poetic. And a mom says her son is dating someone who’s non-binary. She supports their relationship, but...
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...