Farmer’s Slang & Its Analogues. 1890–1909, rev. 2022.
Come up smiling
verbal phr. (pugilistic).—To laugh (or grin) at ‘punishment’; hence (generally) to be superior to rebuff or disaster; to face defeat without flinching.
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1887. J. S. WINTER, That Imp, p. 67. And yet COME UP SMILING at the end of it.
