go upstairs

go upstairs

1. Literally, to climb steps to reach a higher level of a building. A: "Where's Susie?" B: "Oh, she went upstairs to bed." When you go upstairs, can you take the laundry basket with you?
2. To go to someone higher in a hierarchy, like one's boss, to seek their authority for a decision or other purpose. I'd go upstairs with that request—we don't have the authority to sign off on something like that.
See also: go, upstairs
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • take up to
  • take up to (someone, something, or some place)
  • be kicked upstairs
  • upstairs
  • kick (one) upstairs
  • kick somebody upstairs
  • kick someone upstairs
  • kick upstairs
  • there it is
  • there we are
References in classic literature
A man she knew, one of the workmen employed at an adjoining villa, was passing by, and she begged him to come in and go upstairs with her; she feared something had happened to one of her lodgers.
Then the door closed gently and he heard her go upstairs.
But after Lisbeth had been rocking herself and moaning for some minutes, she suddenly paused and said aloud to herself, "I'll go an' see arter Adam, for I canna think where he's gotten; an' I want him to go upstairs wi' me afore it's dark, for the minutes to look at the corpse is like the meltin' snow."
Adam turned round at once and said, "Yes, mother; let us go upstairs. Come, Seth, let us go together."
And now, don't you want to go upstairs and lie down for an hour?
"Are there two of you wanting to go upstairs?" he inquired.
Now, Charles, give me your arm and I shall go upstairs."
Stephen Blair, 49, told firefighters "there's a grow on the go upstairs" after they were called to Whitehall Street in Shrewsbury.
"His brother went to go upstairs and said Connor had hung himself."
Miles Kane Speaking in a hotel in New York, Brodsky described in her article how Kane asked her if she wanted to "go upstairs" when she asked what he and Alex Turner, who was also being interviewed, were doing for the rest of the day.
Penny Lancaster has been attacked for saying men should leave the cooking to women and, like her hubby Rod, go upstairs and play with their train sets.
One of those who arrived to carry out the work, for which they had no need to go upstairs, was the defendant.
The court heard the couple argued on March 1 when Macdonald, who had been drinking, went to go upstairs to eat a toastie where Miss Jubb had just vacuumed.
"I was going to go upstairs to have a look when I was confronted by flames, it all just happened so quickly.
But Shutt used the invitation to go upstairs and rifle the 89-year-old's drawers before stealing his life savings.