Teppy, may I say how much I adore the idea of a "really really bad drabble" challenge?

Me, too! Oh yes. A lot of fun to be had there.

Well, that may have to be next, then....

Surely one of the reasons English has thrived for as long as it has is its adaptability? Without the rigidity of most of the languages that acted as legs for it, it can encompass pretty much anything thrown at it.

To be fair, this is true of every language. Armenian is a language very hard to classify, because it borrows so heavily from Iranian. Basically, if your country has been invaded and occupied for any extended time, your language is "flexible". (I'm afraid this does not explain why French picked up "le weekend," but French people are different.)

"Turned up missing" is counterintuitive, but douesn't really sound wrong t my ear. You "come up lame," even if you didn't fall down to begin with, so I think there's something going on with both those phrase where we don't quite have the right verb, but we've got something close, despite its, techically, being quite the wrong very.

Is the "turn up" construction used with states other than missing? As in, "turn up" refers merely to a discovery of a fact, and it doesn't matter if the fact seems not to line up with it?

I've certainly seen 'turned up dead'.

See, for me, "come up lame" is a perfectly accurate visual descriptor: I immediately think of, say, a basball player, running for first base and pulling his hamstring. He stumbles, then gets up, slow and painful, and he's limping; the trainer runs out, the player is standing, he limps or hops off the field. He did, quite literally, "come up lame".

But for me, "turns up" and "missing" are opposites. If I read that something has turned up, I immediately think, aha, it was found. It was gone; now it's not.

So I can't parse it with "missing."

edit:

I've certainly seen 'turned up dead'

As in, was found dead. That one makes perfect sense to me. It's just used with "missing" that bugs me.

I don't think I've heard come up lame before, either--at least, I haven't noticed it.

I always parsed it as the fact turned up, not the person. So it'd never have occurred to me as counterintuitive.

I think you're right, ita. "Turned up" may be an abbreviation of "turned out to be," i.e. a phrase marking the beginning of being in the adjectival state (missing, lame, dead) rather than meaning the verb's literal content.

Like, "He was missing on May 10" doesn't give a sense of the order of events, but "He turned up missing on May 10" tells you he might have been missing before then, but May 10 was the first day anybody noticed.

Huh. ita, if I'm reading you correctly, my parse is the exact opposite: the object is what turned up, not the fact.

So "turned up dead", which I tend to associate with unpleasant headlines about someone's car being found in suspicious circs (washed a bit too thoroughly, inside and out, no prints or DNA material anywhere) and with no sign of the owner, is always going to define itself to me as "the missing owner turned up dead".

If someone turns up dead, to me (like Nutty), they might have been dead for yonks. When he turns up dead is when we find out about it.