“Belly up” is a colloquial phrase used to describe failure or death. Its origin comes from dead fish floating with their stomachs up. It can also refer to approaching a bar to drink. The phrase is often applied to businesses or social movements that have failed or lost interest.
The phrase “belly up” is most commonly recognized in many English-speaking societies as an idiomatic way of describing a condition of being dead, broken, hopelessly failed, or otherwise “done.” It is often used with the verb “go” as in: “to go belly up”. This colloquial jargon for a general condition is useful for describing almost any type of negative scenario.
As for the origin of the phrase, most would agree that as a popular idiom, the phrase which came naturally from literal usage to eventually serve as a figurative slang term. The original usage of the phrase would have applied to fish and other creatures which, when dead, float in water or lie on the ground with their stomachs turned up. Over time, the physical condition and its visual or mental image served as a descriptive way to replace a variety of simple adjectives.
It is important to know that another similar phrase with a very different meaning can also be reduced to the phrase “belly up”. The whole phrase is “belly up to the bar” and this phrase is used in parts of the English-speaking world. The idea of going “face up to the bar” is that the subject of the reference will be approaching the bar to drink alcohol. Someone who wants to drink with someone in a bar might shorten his plea to the simple two-word phrase.
In the more common usage of the phrase “belly up,” this idea is often applied to the corporate world. This descriptive label can be applied to smaller, smaller businesses, many of which tend to fail in their first few years of business, or to larger companies, such as established blue-chip companies that surprise financial analysts by failing spectacularly. For example, someone in the aftermath of a financial crisis may state that a certain major banking firm has “gone belly up,” where the colorful descriptive nature of the statement serves to apply the element of surprise and the more improbable of financial failure.
In more abstract uses of the phrase, the object is not a formal enterprise but a more nebulous endeavor such as a social movement. To say that a social movement has “gone belly up” generally implies that it has become less active or visible due to decreased interest. In these situations, the idiom can be quite cryptic and listeners or readers may ask for some clarification.
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