up a stump
prep_phrase1
Informal At a loss, puzzled, in a bind.
- GEO. Why it's got to. Suppose we wandered out of it and took a chance at the language on our own responsibility, where the nation would we be? Up a stump, that's where. Our only safety is in sticking like wax to the text.1892, Mark Twain, Meisterschaft: In Three Acts, act II, scene I, page 181:
- Manager Dahlen said that Callahan and Stengel were so evenly matched that he was "up a stump" trying to pick between them.1984, Robert W. Creamer, Stengel: His Life and Times, Bison Books, published 1996, →ISBN, page 67:
2 more examples
- Whereas your ordinary middle-ranking persons, they never had the least notion of what it was, so naturally they were up a stump every time they come across it, you see.1996, Mendel Mokher Sefarim, Dan Miron, & Ken Frieden, Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler, Fishke the Lame and Benjamin the Third, Schocken Books, →ISBN, page 243:
- In fact, Darwin was unable to decide on a suitable present, telling his roommate that he was up a stump about what to get for his sister and new brother-in-law.2009, Kent Freeland, A Street Called Darwin, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 54: