answer up

present singular third person answers up · participle present answering up · participle past answered up · past answered up

1. intransitiveTo come forth with a prompt answer.

   I overheard a voice on the fire south radio channel trying to hail us. I answer up. “This is central, go ahead unit calling.

   2012, Kelly R. Rasmussen, Call 911!: True Stories from My Life in Emergency Dispatch, page 70

   3 more examples

   "Answer up, Tom," but Tom didn't answer up. So he said it again, and Tom didn't answer up again; and come to look, there warn't anything there but the mule—Tom was gone.

   c. 1884, Mark Twain, “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians”, in Walter Blair, editor, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians: And Other Unfinished Stories, published 2011, page 63

   Come now, if you don't answer up at once it will be too late, "for I shall run you right to the station. What happened to the man who went overboard?"

   1912, The Bradys and the Yellow Giant

   “Mavis?” he called out. When she didn't answer, he called again. “Mavis, goddang it, answer up.” “That you, Carl?” she called back from the dugout.

   2012, Sheldon Russell, Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush