jack up
Meaning
- To raise, hoist, or lift a thing using a jack, or similar means.
- (informal) To raise, increase, or accelerate; often said of prices, fees, or rates.
- (colloquial) To ruin; wreck; mess up; screw up; sometimes as a bowdlerized substitution for fuck up.
- (obsolete) To give up; to abandon (something, e.g. a job, contract)
- To organise something.
- (colloquial) To shoot, especially in the context of a poor shot opportunity.
- (slang) To improve or embellish on (something).
- (informal) To refuse to follow an order.
- (informal) To criticize, discipline or reprimand.
Etymology
* Sense of “hoist with a jack” is from 1885; then, “increase prices, etc.” (1904, American English); both ultimately from noun jack (“mechanical device used to raise heavy objects”) * “Screw up, mess up” sense derived from, or influenced by fuck up, as a bowdlerization; also possibly influenced by jacked up (“high, intoxicated”) * First dialectal idiomatic meaning: “abandon, give up” (1873), possibly a corruption of chuck up, as chuck up the sponge (“give up, concede, give token of submission”)
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Notes