jack up
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jack up
Where it comes from
* 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”)
verb jacks up · jacking up · jacked up
- To raise, hoist, or lift a thing using a jack, or similar means. He jacked the car up to change the tire
- To raise, increase, or accelerate; often said of prices, fees, or rates. I can't believe they're going to jack up the price of gasoline again — and after they already raised it twenty cents a gallon!
- To ruin; wreck; mess up; screw up; sometimes as a bowdlerized substitution for fuck up. I'm not letting him use my computer again; he always jacks it up.
- To give up; to abandon (something, e.g. a job, contract) 1881?, Garnet Walch, A Little Tin Plate, Google Books Says I, “Let's jack up, man alive, / An' try further down on the Creek!” / “All right!” says my mate, “but we'll drive / Right an' left to the end of this week.”
- To organise something.
- To shoot, especially in the context of a poor shot opportunity.
- To improve or embellish on (something). I jacked up the recipes with some fresh ingredients.
- To refuse to follow an order.
- To criticize, discipline or reprimand.
- To inject a drug into (oneself) intravenously. And I've had scag, I've had speed / I've jacked up until I bleed / So what, so what?
