SIZE UP • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Size up

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/saɪz əp/ Listen

verb

Size v. t.

To fix the standard of. "To size weights and measures." (R.)

To adjust or arrange according to size or bulk. Specifically:

(a)

(Mil.) To take the height of men, in order to place them in the ranks according to their stature.

(b)

(Mining) To sift, as pieces of ore or metal, in order to separate the finer from the coarser parts.

To swell; to increase the bulk of.

(Mech.) To bring or adjust anything exactly to a required dimension, as by cutting.

To size up, to estimate or ascertain the character and ability of. See 4th Size, 4. (Slang, U.S.) "We had to size up our fellow legislators."

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Etymology of 'Size up'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Size up" Quotes from Famous Books

... Despite his superior intelligence and his vaunted ability to size up his fellow man, he was as blind and unsuspecting as a child when it came to penetrating the real motives of the conspirators. Vain, self-important, possessed of an abnormal conceit, men of his type go ahead ruthlessly, ...

— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... so distant that no magnifying will bring its size up to zero. Though called a fixed star, it is, like all fixed stars, moving with inconceivable velocity; but no magnifying will show that velocity as anything ...

— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... not waste any time in their rooms, but entered at once upon the work of their mission. On the piazza they halted to size up the other visitors at the hotel. From this high point of view they could see the harbor, ...

— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic

... "Now, you slip past me and go up stairs, to the room in front, and see if the man there can be gotten away. I want to size up the men in there. I can see them by poking my head out occasionally, but they can't ...

— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... to amuse yourself with me. And because I don't know what to do with my hands and because my coat fits badly, you thought I wouldn't realize what you were doing. You are very narrow—you fashionable people. You don't even know that everybody ought to be judged on his own ground. To size up a race-horse, you don't take him into a drawing room. And it wouldn't be quite fair, would it, for me to judge these drawing- room dolls by what they could do out among real men and women? You—for instance. How would you show up, if you had to face life with no ...

— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips