English

Alternative forms

• Upright Man

Noun

upright man ‎(plural upright men)

1. (archaic, Britain, cant) The leader of a group of thieves or vagrants.
   • 1611, Middleton, Thomas, The Roaring Girle:

     I hope then you can cant, for by your cudgels, you sirra are an upright man.

   • 1815, Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering:

     And the gentry had kind hearts, and would have given baith lap and pannel to ony puir gypsy; and there was not one, from Johnnie Faa the upright man, to little Christie that was in the panniers, would cloyed a dud from them.

2. Used other than as an idiom: see upright,‎ man.
   • 2013, Danson Enogiomwan Ubebe, Return to God: The ABC of 'set Free by Knowing the Truth', ISBN 1780884826, page 19:

     Later He gave him freedom from the Lord to live alone as an upright man to cultivate and keep His garden called Eden.

Synonyms

• See Wikisaurus:criminal leader

Derived terms

• dimber damber upright man

References

• Barrère, Albert; Leland, Charles Godfrey (1889) A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, volume 2, page 391
• Farmer, John Stephen (1904) Slang and Its Analogues, volume 7, page 264