- published: 23 Oct 2014
- views: 166853425
Shut Up and Dance may refer to:
"Shut up" is a direct command with a meaning similar to "be quiet"', but which is commonly perceived as an angrier and more forceful demand to stop making noise or otherwise communicating. The phrase is probably a shortened form of "shut your mouth up", and its use is generally considered impolite.
Prior to the Twentieth century, the phrase "shut up" was rarely used as an imperative, and had a different meaning altogether. To say that someone was "shut up" meant that they were locked up, quarantined, or held prisoner. For example, several passages in the Bible instruct that if a priest determines that a person shows certain symptoms of illness, "then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague seven days". This meaning was also used in the sense of closing something, such as a business, and it is also from this use that the longer phrase "shut up your mouth" likely originated.
One source has indicated this:
However, Shakespeare's use of the phrase in King Lear is limited to a reference to the shutting of doors at the end of Scene II, with the characters of Regan and Cornwall both advising the King, "Shut up your doors". The earlier meaning of the phrase, to close something, is widely used in Little Dorrit, but is used in one instance in a manner which foreshadows the modern usage: