Screw up one’s courage

Origin of: Screw up one’s courage

Screw up one’s courage

To tighten up one’s courage as one would a screw, the metaphor was coined by Shakespeare in Macbeth (1605) Act I, Scene VII, “But screw your courage to the sticking place and we’ll not fail.” The sticking place was the full extent of the screw, where it was fully tightened.