Etymology Journal ยท N
Not all there upstairs
Meaning
- A way of saying someone is a bit dim-witted or mentally scattered. It suggests the upstairs, meaning the brain, is missing some important furniture.
Playful, slightly rude
Used in a sentence
- He keeps forgetting his own name, I think he is not all there upstairs.
- The new intern is nice, but I fear he is not all there upstairs.
- I tried to explain the directions to him three times, but he is just not all there upstairs.
The backstory
This is a British-influenced idiom that became common in American slang. It uses the upstairs as a euphemism for the head or the brain.
Heard in
Nationwide
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