There’s evidence of use of upsum as far back as the early 2000s, though it’s only in the last couple of years that the word has really gained ground. It’s one of those neologisms that sounds very much like a ‘made-up’ word, some clumsy bit of creativity that a person thought of when reaching for a noun alternative to the phrasal verb sum up (= ‘to give a summary of something’). It may well have started life as journalist jargon, but through random exposure somehow made the leap from a reporter’s idiolect to the wider world. The noun derivation summing-up is of course a well-established forerunner, but is chiefly legal terminology – a statement made by a lawyer or judge that gives a summary of the evidence in a court case.

There’s evidence of use of upsum as far back as the early 2000s, though it’s only in the last couple of years that the word has really gained ground. It’s one of those neologisms that sounds very much like a ‘made-up’ word, some clumsy bit of creativity that a person thought of when reaching for a noun alternative to the phrasal verb sum up (= ‘to give a summary of something’). It may well have started life as journalist jargon, but through random exposure somehow made the leap from a reporter’s idiolect to the wider world. The noun derivation summing-up is of course a well-established forerunner, but is chiefly legal terminology – a statement made by a lawyer or judge that gives a summary of the evidence in a court case.