up the pole

idiomatic phrase

British

: mentally unsound

—used informally in an exaggerated way

The pressure of his job nearly drove him up the pole.

… my mum was up the pole worrying about how she was going to pay the bills.—

Carolyn Leckie

Examples of up the pole in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Strip clubs increasingly featured pole dancing, and dancers invented more tricks — climbing up the pole and performing splits on the ceiling, twerking upside-down, and plummeting back to the ground. —

Celia Ford, Vox, 10 Aug. 2024 And in terms of the trick of hanging upside down and being able to actually climb up the pole — that was insane. —

Max Gao, Variety, 23 July 2024 The ball hit halfway up the pole bracing the batter’s eye at backfield No. 1 before caroming into play. —

Kevin Sherrington, Dallas News, 13 Mar. 2023 McGill, who turns 24 on Sept. 20, has had a varied background in sports, participating in soccer and lacrosse as a youth before running cross country and taking up the pole vault at Fallston High. —

Edward Lee, Baltimore Sun, 1 Sep. 2022 This particular utility box is about two-thirds of the way up the pole. —

Washington Post, 24 Apr. 2022 Slabs of different colors crawl up the pole, which is removeable and can be installed in two different places on the Harrison Center's new rooftop deck. —

Domenica Bongiovanni, The Indianapolis Star, 12 Mar. 2021

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'up the pole.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.