turn-up

turn-up (plural turn-ups)

1. Fabric turned up at the bottom of trousers to make them shorter.
2. (dated) A fight or disturbance.
   • 1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak House 26:

     I was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and swallering the smoke, and what with being nat’rally unfort’nate in the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older, almost whenever he was too far gone in drink—which was almost always—my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time.

3. A stroke of good luck; something that appears unexpectedly. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

• (fabric turned up): cuff, trouser cuff (US)

• upturn