up to the hub

English

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Etymology

Suggesting a wheel stuck in mud.

Prepositional phrase

up to the hub

(idiomatic) As far as possible in embarrassment or difficulty, or in business; deeply involved.
- Amateur work, illustrated (volume 4, page 406)
  I am afraid A. F. S. (Dresden) gets "up to the hub" in engineering difficulties sometimes, but this will help him to appreciate the force, beauty and application of the expression.
- 1864, The Gleaner, page 13:
  I was up to the hub in love, and was goin' into it like a locomotive.
- 1885, Andrew Madsen Smith, Up and Down in the World, Or, Paddle Your Own Canoe, page 106:
  […] I was like the wheels of the wagon, out of which I had made some of my capital — up to the hub in the mire of poverty, a heavy load forcing me deeper down, and no aid likely to be given me.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “up to the hub”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)