to eagle up
- phrasal verb
- Informal
- Despite her nerves, she eagled up and delivered a confident speech.
Examples
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When the team faced setbacks, their captain urged everyone to eagle up and keep pushing forward.
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You need to eagle up if you want to overcome these obstacles and succeed.
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Don't hesitate, just eagle up!
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She eagles up whenever faced with a tough decision.
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When the challenge seemed overwhelming, he decided to eagle up and tackle it head-on.
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The coach encouraged the players to eagle up and perform their best during the championship game.
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In the face of adversity, she chose to eagle up and support her team with unwavering determination.
Synonyms
To act brave and take responsibility when things are hard
To become or make someone more cheerful and confident
Face a difficult task and succeed at it
To stay strong and positive when facing hard times
Face a hard situation bravely and take responsibility
Gather the courage to face a hard task
To make yourself brave enough to do something difficult
Antonyms
How Courageous
Surface Forms
Morphology
eagle + up
The sense 'to rise to a challenge' is partially inferable from the image of an eagle rising/up and the particle 'up', but the expression uses a noun as a verb (eagle up) and relies on animal-metaphor and cultural knowledge rather than standard compositional rules. Because the verbing of 'eagle' is non-standard and the exact nuance (courage/determination) is not directly encoded in the constituent meanings, a B1 learner who knows the words might guess the general idea but not reliably infer the full meaning.
Etymology
The verb eagle up may come from the image of an eagle pushing itself up into the sky on strong wings. Just like the bird rising to meet the wind, the phrase means 'to rise to a challenge' or 'face a task with courage'.