jack up

Meaning

1. To raise, hoist, or lift a thing using a jack, or similar means.
2. (informal) To raise, increase, or accelerate; often said of prices, fees, or rates.
3. (colloquial) To ruin; wreck; mess up; screw up; sometimes as a bowdlerized substitution for fuck up.
4. (Australia, West-Country, dialectal, intransitive, obsolete, transitive) To give up; to abandon (something, e.g. a job, contract)
5. (New-Zealand) To organise something.
6. (colloquial) To shoot, especially in the context of a poor shot opportunity.
7. (slang, transitive) To improve or embellish on (something).
8. (informal) To refuse to follow an order.
9. (informal) To criticize, discipline or reprimand.

Synonyms

hike up

jack

enhance

step up

top up

ruin

hike

Translations

sollevare

aufbocken

cric

valet

elevare

accrescere

maggiorare

elevare

verheffen

vijzelen

enlairar

elevar

levantar

hochwinden

melhorar

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”)