up to eleven

PIE word *h₁óynos The term refers to a scene in the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap (1984), in which the character Nigel Tufnel, the lead guitarist of the band Spinal Tap, shows the director of the documentary Marty DiBergi a guitar amplifier with setting knobs that go from zero to eleven, rather than the standard zero to ten.

• "She and River looked at me hard; but I lowered my eyes and leaned forward, with the nonchalance turned up to eleven, extinguished my cigarette, made eye-contact and nodded curtly."
• "But if we try to fly, especially carrying Zealand, we're going to be puking our guts out by the time we get all the way up there. Flying is like motion sickness turned up to eleven, […]"
• "Oh, Lady Ebb, I'm up to eleven today after that last biscuit."
• "It's the weekly half hour when the emotion is turned up to 11 but the atmosphere is so quietened that you can hear the dust clattering against the studio's lighting rig."
• "As we reach the city today, rush hour has been turned up to eleven, so there's plenty of waiting in traffic."
• "[W]hen you look at conditions, it's not all happy days down there. Well, maybe it's happier now. But what our textbook said? Was that they had, you know, torture parties there. Once. Where torturers get drunk and turn the dial up to eleven."
• "It's not that London was unexciting. But I didn't understand it, felt lost. Its amp went up to eleven."
• "But because this is the internet, someone always has to pitch in and turn the hostility up to 11."

• all the way
• from soup to nuts
• in excelsis
• to the backbone
• to the bone
• to the brim
• to the core
• to the fullest
• to the full
• to the gills
• to the gunnels
• to the hilt
• to the max
• to the nines
• to the nth degree
• to the tonsils
• to the top of one's bent
• top to bottom
• up to eleven

• Spinal Tap-ian
• more at eleven