shoot up

present singular third person shoots up · participle present shooting up · participle past shot up · past shot up

1. figurativelyintransitivesometimesTo grow taller or larger rapidly.

   Our operating costs have shot up due to the fuel shortage.

   2 more examples

   He was a small child, but shot up when he reached his teenage years.

   As a result, prices have shot up. One hundred kilos of extra virgin olive oil from Jaén in Spain cost €787 in November last year, up from €262.50 five years earlier, making olive oil a more attractive market for fraudsters.

   2024 July 29, Michael Goodier, “Olive oil fraud and mislabelling cases hit record high in EU”, in The Guardian

2. transitiveTo fire many bullets or shells at.

   The terrorists decided to shoot up a convenience store.

   4 more examples

   There was some laughter, and Roddle was left free to expand his ideas on the periodic visits of cowboys to the town. "Mason Rickets, he had ten big punkins a-sittin' in front of his store, an' them fellers from the Upside-down-F ranch shot 'em up […]."

   1899, Stephen Crane, chapter 1, in Twelve O'Clock

   "We must club the seals," I announced, when convinced of my poor marksmanship. "I have heard the sealers talk about clubbing them." "They are so pretty," she objected. "I cannot bear to think of it being done. It is so directly brutal, you know; so different from shooting them." "That roof must go on," I answered grimly. "Winter is almost here. It is our lives against theirs. It is unfortunate we haven't plenty of ammunition, but I think, anyway, that they suffer less from being clubbed than from being all shot up. Besides, I shall do the clubbing."

   1904, Jack London, chapter 30, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC

   Shepard: What do they do here that you don't like, Elnora? Elnora: I thought we'd be flying around the galaxy shooting up bad guys and stuff, right? Elnora: But no, they just sell red sand and illegal weapons tech. They even smuggled an Ardat-Yakshi off-world.

   2010, BioWare, Mass Effect 2 (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Dossier: The Justicar (Commercial Spaceport, Illium)

   The Johnston emerges from a smokescreen to find the Haruna at close range. So of course it shoots up the battleship's superstructure whilst ducking back into the smoke as Kongō tries to take it out using its main battery.

   2019 February 27, Drachinifel, 27:00 from the start, in The Battle of Samar - Odds? What are those?, archived from the original on 03 Nov 2022

3. transitiveTo use up (ammunition) by shooting.

   Most of our ammunition has now been shot up.

4. intransitivetransitiveTo inject (a drug) intravenously.

   This place is always full of smackheads shooting up.

   1 more example

   For did we not, all of us, know scores of friends who used drugs to energize their workouts, who smoked dope, took speed, and shot up anabolic steroids to facilitate that mad, muscular frenzy?

   1986, Paul Reed, “Serenity”, in Eric E. Rofes, editor, Gay Life: Leisure, Love, and Living for the Contemporary Gay Male, page 9

   Synonyms: jack up

5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see shoot, up.