jack up

== English == === 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”) === Pronunciation === === Verb === jack up (third-person singular simple present jacks up, present participle jacking up, simple past and past participle jacked up) To raise, hoist, or lift a thing using a jack, or similar means. 1987 August, A. K. Hamlin, letter to Homeowners′ Clinic, Popular Mechanics, page 109, How can I secure them without jacking up the whole house to get the bolts in? (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, transitive and intransitive, dialect, West Country and Australia) To give up; to abandon (something, e.g. a job, contract) Synonyms: jig up, throw up, chuck up, discontinue, jack in 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.” 1888, Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms, chapter 19, Google Books Not but what I'd had a lot to bear, and took a deal of punishment before he jacked up. 1900, John Strange Winter, A Self-Made Countess: The Justification of a Husband, page 201 alternate source “I don't think I shall enter for the Point to Point this year, because we're going to jack up.” “Going to jack up what?” asked one, while the others looked up enquiringly. “We're going to jack up the Service. […]” (New Zealand) To organise something. (basketball, colloquial) To shoot, especially in the context of a poor shot opportunity. (slang, transitive) To improve or embellish on (something). (informal) To refuse to follow an order. (informal) To criticize, discipline or reprimand. (slang, ambitransitive) To inject a drug into (oneself) intravenously. 1981, So What? (Anti-Nowhere League song) And I've had scag, I've had speed / I've jacked up until I bleed / So what, so what? 2005, Bob Geldof, ‎Paul Vallely, Is that It? (page 89) He had nowhere to stay. I told him he could stay a week, but if he jacked himself up in the house, I'd kick him out. Heroin horrified me. ==== Usage notes ==== Usually, the object may appear before or after the particle (jack up the car or jack the car up) If the object is a pronoun, then it must come before the particle (jack it up, not jack up it) ==== Translations ==== ==== See also ==== jack-up jacked up (as adjective) jack-up-the-orchard ==== References ==== For sense: “obsolete, dialectal: to give up, abandon” “Jack up”, in A Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect, by William Douglas Parish, 1875, page 63 “Jack-up”, in Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs, by Arthur Benoni Evans, et al., English Dialect Society, 1881, page 177 “Jack up”, in The West Somerset Word-Book, by Frederick Thomas Elworthy, English Dialect Society, 1886, page 377 “Jack, Jack up”, in The Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, by Thomas Darlington, English Dialect Society, 1887, page 229 “Jack up”, in A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Sheffield, by Sidney Oldall Addy, English Dialect Society, 1888, page 118 “Jack up”, in Dictionary of the Slang-English of Australia and of Some Mixed Languages, by Karl August Lentzner, 1892, page 26 “Jack up”, in Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present, by John Stephen Farmer, et al., 1896, page 26