Vinny, along the lines of words whose meaning have evolved, I have always wondered at the term "up tight." When I was in my early 20's, about 60 years ago, "up tight" was a positive term. There was a song containing the lyrics, "Everything is all right, uptight, out of sight." Somewhere along the way, it came to mean tense, jittery, nervous, angry and annoyed.
Hmmm, the OED seems to think that these two meanings are roughly the same age (excepting the isolated 1934 quotation favoring "nervous" as older):
uptight, adj.
Quotations:
Etymology:
colloquial and slang (originally U.S.).
1.
a. Of a person: in a state of nervous tension or anxiety; inhibited, worried, ‘on edge’; angry, ‘worked up’ (about something). Quot.
1934 is an isolated early example.
1934 J. M. Cain Postman always rings Twice xvi. 186 I'm getting up tight now, and I've been thinking about Cora. Do you think she knows I didn't do it?
1966 Sunday Times 13 Feb. (Colour Suppl.) 35/4 Up tight, tense.
1968 Mad lxxvii. 30 ‘Uptight’ means, like, a bad scene. It's when you're hung up, or wigged out, or you can't make it. We all get ‘uptight’ once in a while.
1969 C. Young Todd Dossier 38 He looked worried. Really worried. As the kids say, he was up-tight.
1973 E. Caldwell Annette (1974) vi. ii. 137 I'd guess you'd gotten so uptight from being denied motherhood that you were ready to leave home.
1975 D. Lodge Changing Places ii. 83 You're feeling all cold and uptight and wishing you hadn't come.
1977 M. Edelman Polit. Lang. v. 90 To the uptight policeman everyone is a potential offender.
1981 P. P. Read Villa Golitsyn ii. iv. 112 I was afraid you might be a little uptight about that sort of thing.
b. figurative. Characteristically formal in manner or style; correct, strait-laced.
1969 Manch. Guardian Weekly 28 Aug. 18 Who would have thought that an uptight institution like the august Oxford University Press would have done a thing like this? Here is a..spirited and spiritous piece of autobiography..served up as a book.
1970 E. M. Brecher Sex Researchers ix. 253 They tended to swing in the same socially correct, formal, ‘up-tight’ style they followed in their other activities.
1976 Chatelaine (Montreal) Jan. 73/3 In the morning, the apartment looked curiously uptight to Meredith.
2. In approbation: that reaches the desired standard; excellent, fine.
1962 Down Beat Aug. 20/2 Jazz Gene Ammons Up Tight!
1966 Surfer
7 iv. 11 The waves are a perfection 10 to 15 feet and straight over. Really up tight and out of sight!
1969 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 31 May 11/7 Disc jockeys..talk in a kind of sub-English..as in ‘All right baby sock-it-to-me it's allright uptight yeah.’
3. Short or out of money; ‘broke’.
1967 Time 6 Jan. 18/3 ‘Up tight’ can mean anxious, emotionally involved or broke.
1968 Esquire Apr. 160/3 The expression ‘uptight’, which meant being in financial straits, appeared on the soul scene in the general vicinity of 1953.
). But the OED does not list the sense you mentioned, and the sense of "holder of non-doctrinal opinion" dates from the 14th century.
Ain't nothing easy!
