stand up and give it to him

English

Phrase

stand up and give it to him

  1. (nautical) A phrase shouted by the officer on a whaleboat to order an attack with a harpoon.
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Dart”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 321:
      In this straining, bawling state, then, with his back to the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry—“Stand up, and give it to him!”
    • 2024, Richard F. Weir, edited by Andrew W. German, The Watch's Wild Cry: A Voyage Aboard the Whaling Vessel Clara Bell, →ISBN, page 58:
      Soon we were close by the waist boat’s hale and now the mate sung out to Johnson our boatsteerer “stand up and give it to him” and he did give it to solid.
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