muscle up

present singular third person muscles up · participle present muscling up · participle past muscled up · past muscled up

1. intransitivetransitiveTo train the muscles for increased size and strength.

   We spent the summer trying to muscle up for football next term.

2. intransitiveTo force one's way into or through.

   There are only about ten tables, so you'll probably have to wait — or just muscle up to the bar like everyone else.

   2007, Neil Schlecht, Spain for Dummies, page 470

3. figurativelyintransitivetransitiveTo make stronger or more powerful.

   Churchill had again thwarted the American impulse to muscle up in the Pacific theater at the expense of the Atlantic[…]

   2007, Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, page 26