jack up
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.81 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To ruin; wreck; mess up; screw up; sometimes as a bowdlerized substitution for fuck up.
Colloquial
Example Sentences
- "He jacked the car up to change the tire"
- "The oil rig can be jacked up higher when the hydraulic legs touch the sea floor."
- "Nor was there any proof that they had been improperly used in jacking up the end of the car."
- "From this time forward the overhang to the east of the center row was carried entirely on the clay, the shoring screws from the G and H piers having been removed to assist in jacking up at the west side."
- "With certain girder bridges, the increased clearance is achieved by jacking up the entire superstructure with the bridge deck intact."
- "When alteration of train formation is necessary, coupling and uncoupling of sections is carried out by jacking up the front end of each section so that the socket of the drawbar is lifted clear of the pin of the drawbar of the section ahead."
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”)