To do up thoroughly, in a good or a bad sense, as it may happen.
a. 1848. Nature seemed to take particular pains to have everything as it should be,—“done up brown,” as they say in the Bowery.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ i. 188.
1851. The negro came up and I examined, and could see nothing in his ears to make him deaf, and from the way the negro acted and looked at me I thought he was doin’ up the rascal very brown.—M. L. Byrn, ‘An Arkansaw Doctor,’ p. 162.
1854. All I have got to say is, you did me up brown,—a good deal browner than I expected.—Weekly Oregonian, June 17.
