[Denis DNT]

I always thought it was pay raise unttil yesterday when I was trying to correct a student. A colleague intervened to let me know both were correct.
Damn! This is the second time I get screwed up by these two words. The first time it was whether or not to say:
- Raise your hands or raise up your hands (repetition)
- Rise or rise up (Is rise up a repetition or not?)
SOS!

[susan53]

All OK in the right context -examples from the British national corpus

a) pay rise / raise is a UK / US variation.

b) up used after raise often tends to have a poetic /archaic feel, often biblical. Eg : Ask the Lord to raise up His peacemakers. However, it is also found in other contexts : When approached by a possible killer they hide their real heads and raise up the tips of their tails. In your example, as a British speaker I'd say Put your hands up so the problem doesn't occur , but googling produced 426,000 entries for raise your hands as opposed to 24,500 for raise up your hands.

c) up used after rise again occurs in poetic contexts -But, as he rode, a terrible curiosity began to rise up in him and prick him like a gimlet - but is more common than raise up in other contexts. Examples : Slowly rise up, lowering your heels to the floor;The people would rise up,'; Mann said excitedly ; When they persisted in calling on Iraq's Shia majority to rise up and overthrow his Sunni-based regime, he was forced into war. The last two examples show a common use - rise up meaning to revolt against.

[mesmark]

Isn't it that you are mistaking this use of 'up' to mean direction when it also has the meaning of completely.

tear up
clean up
wash up

rise up
raise up

???

[mesmark]

or am I just making the answer fit the question?

[susan53]

I don't think it is the same as the "completely" use - for me up does reinforce the sense of direction (metaphorically in the revolt sense of course). But that's an intuitive reaction and, as always where language is concerned, individual intuitive reactions are not necessarily representative of wider use. The only justification I can find is that usually up changes the meaning slightly - tearing a piece of paper and tearing it up are not the same thing. And for me cleaning a room involves hoovering and dusting, while cleaning up also means tidying. I'm on stickier ground with wash up in the American sense - is there a difference in the "size" of the wash - I know you wash up for dinner - ie give your hands a quick wash, but if you were really dirty and just need to get clean is wash up still appropriate? Or is there another slight difference? In UK English of course, wash up means wash the dishes.

With rise/raise however, I don't notice any difference of meaning with or without up - just intensification. What do other people think?

[Denis DNT]

Susan and Mesmark, thanks for the explanations but I must confess I am really lost now.
So "raise up" is also correct sometmes?

[susan53]

Quote Denis DNT

.
So "raise up" is also correct sometmes?

Yes, though I don't think I'd use it personally. I think it's most common in US English, though relatively rare even there especially when used in a non-literal sense. For instance, I've just googled "raise up a question" and "raise up an interesting question". I found no examples at all on British or Australian websites, and only thirteen on US sites.

[Denis DNT]

Thanks again susan.
I will have a bad day next Monday rectifying the errors with my class. I need to take back what I said. Some of them must have found out already I guess.

uuh!!!! Teaching!!!