uptightadj.

1934 J. M. Cain Postman always rings Twice xvi. 186 I'm getting up tight now, and I've been thinking about Cora. Do you think she knows I didn't do it?

1966 Sunday Times 13 Feb. (Colour Suppl.) 35/4 Up tight, tense.

1968 Mad lxxvii. 30 ‘Uptight’ means, like, a bad scene. It's when you're hung up, or wigged out, or you can't make it. We all get ‘uptight’ once in a while.

1969 C. Young Todd Dossier 38 He looked worried. Really worried. As the kids say, he was up-tight.

1973 E. Caldwell Annette (1974) vi. ii. 137 I'd guess you'd gotten so uptight from being denied motherhood that you were ready to leave home.

1975 D. Lodge Changing Places ii. 83 You're feeling all cold and uptight and wishing you hadn't come.

1977 M. Edelman Polit. Lang. v. 90 To the uptight policeman everyone is a potential offender.

1981 P. P. Read Villa Golitsyn ii. iv. 112 I was afraid you might be a little uptight about that sort of thing.

1969 Manch. Guardian Weekly 28 Aug. 18 Who would have thought that an uptight institution like the august Oxford University Press would have done a thing like this? Here is a..spirited and spiritous piece of autobiography..served up as a book.

1970 E. M. Brecher Sex Researchers ix. 253 They tended to swing in the same socially correct, formal, ‘up-tight’ style they followed in their other activities.

1976 Chatelaine (Montreal) Jan. 73/3 In the morning, the apartment looked curiously uptight to Meredith.