bear up

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bear up (third-person singular simple present bears up, present participle bearing up, simple past bore up, past participle borne up)

1. (nautical) To sail close to the wind.
2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To endure hardship cheerfully or without complaining.
3. (idiomatic, transitive) To support; to keep from falling or sinking.
   • 1640, [George Walker], chapter VI, in The Manifold Wisedome of God: In the divers diſpenſation of Grace by Ieſus Christ. […], London: Printed by R. H[odgkinson] for Iohn Bartlet, page 61:

     Afterwards the Lord renued this Covenant with Noah, Gen. 6.10. and did further reveale it in another Type, namely, the ſaving of Noah and his family in the Arke, which was borne up by the flood of Waters; […]

   • 1712 September 10 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “SATURDAY, August 30, 1712”, in The Spectator, number 471; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume V, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC:

     [Religious hope] does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings.

     The spelling has been modernized.

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