The Collaborative International Dictionary
belly up \bel"ly up`\, belly-up \bel"ly-up`\, a. [from analogy to the position of a floating dead fish.] defunct; bankrupt; -- used mostly of commercial organizations; often used in the phrase
go belly-up, i. e. to go bankrupt.
Wiktionary
a. (alternative spelling of belly up English)
WordNet
adj. financially ruined; "a bankrupt company"; "the company went belly-up" [syn: bankrupt, belly-up(p)]
Usage examples of "belly-up".
Sherbrooke, Quebec, CAN, just weeks before its manufacturing facilities were annularly hyperfloriated and the company went belly-up.
Turning a corner, we came upon the palace garbage-dump, at sight of which, despite the crying need for silence, a wail of grief escaped me: atop the peels and potsherds lit by the gibbous moon lay poor dead Pegasus, belly-up and wings aspread like a great shot gull, all four legs stuck straight toward the heaven he would never take me to.
She says I should just turn belly-up and accept a demotion and a cut in pay.
As if watching a film in slow motion, Alex saw the skidder tilt, turn belly-up, and then disappear over the edge.
Sherbrooke, Quebec, CAN, just weeks before its manufacturing facilities were annularly hyperfloriated and the company went belly-up.
The corpses of a hundred parboiled eight-meter Great White sharks floated belly-up all around the crumpled ruin of the blimp.
He opened his eyes and saw the red and purple fish floating belly-up, its long golden fins trailing dispiritedly behind it.
Soon the Internal Revenue Service merrily leapt into the investigation and, within six short months, one of the largest land-development firms in the Southeastern United States went belly-up like a dead mudfish.