cough up

present singular third person coughs up · participle present coughing up · participle past coughed up · past coughed up

1. transitiveTo expel from the lungs, throat, stomach, etc. by coughing.

   He was coughing up blood.

   1 more example

   He was coughing up a lung.

2. To reluctantly or unwillingly give.
   1. idiomaticinformaltransitiveOf money: to pay or disburse reluctantly.

      Do you think he'll be able to cough up the three grand by Tuesday?

      3 more examples

      Thanks to Jeeves I was not going to be called on to cough up several thousand quid.

      1923 May 17, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “Pearls Mean Tears”, in The Inimitable Jeeves, Harmondsworth, Middlesex [London]: Penguin Books, published 1979, →ISBN, page 40

      "[…] Usually businessmen. Married, middle-aged guys who'll cough up fifty bucks to smoke my pole."

      2006, K. M. Soehnlein, You Can Say You Knew Me When, page 240

      I have mentioned before how impressed I was when I used a Glasgow suburban train late one Saturday night, when I reached Queen Street the barriers were closed and I had to cough up a princely couple of quid before being allowed through.

      2025 November 12, Christian Wolmar, “A proper BTP presence is worth every penny”, in RAIL, number 1048, page 41

      Synonyms: shell out, fork out, fork over

   2. idiomaticinformaltransitiveOf other objects: to hand over, give.

      Cough it up, Cooper.

      2013, The Big Bang Theory, season 6, episode 14

      2 more examples

      By the time you get back the men will all be striking out for the fire, and we ’ll break for the house and collar the dollars. Everybody cough up what matches he ’s got.

      1909 April, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking”, in Roads of Destiny, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, page 324

      “Let me have the report by four o’clock.” “Nothing for us, I suppose?” said the elder woman, with a smile. “You wait, my dear. If we get twenty-five pounds fine it has got to go somewhere—Police Fund, of course, but there may be something over. Anyhow, you go and cough it up and then we shall see.”

      1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “In which the Notorious Criminal Gets what the British Law Considers to be His Deserts”, in The Land of Mist, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, published 1926, →OCLC, page 118

   3. idiomaticinformalintransitiveslangtransitiveTo confess; to give up information.
3. idiomaticTo lose a competition by one's own mistakes, usually near the end of the contest.

   That team had the game won, but they coughed it up in the end.

4. idiomatictransitiveTo spill, to fumble.

   England had never before come back to win from a margin of more than 12 points, and the errors continued to come thick and fast as Tom Croft became the latest to cough up the ball.

   2011, Tom Fordyce, Rugby World Cup 2011: England 12-19 France