shore up
/ʃɔˈɹ‿ʌp/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.33 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
1
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "They hastened outside between storms to shore up the damaged fence."
- "He needed something bold and dramatic to shore up his failing candidacy."
- "I shored up a geranium with earth after it had flopped over."
- "This answer fell just at the right time and just in the right place, to save the poor unstable young man from changing his political complexion once more. He had been on the point of beginning to totter again, but this prop shored him up and kept him from floundering back into democracy and re-renouncing aristocracy."
- "[Harry] Redknapp was determined to secure victory and sent on Younes Kaboul and star playmaker Luka Modric to shore things up."
- "However, in 1998, the Argentinean-American physicist Juan Maldacena published a paper that shored up the idea that we live in a ‘holographic universe’ and set the world of physics alight."
Etymology
From shore (“to provide with support”) + up. Shore is derived from Late Middle English shoren (“to prop, to support”) [and other forms], from shore (“a prop, a support”) [and other forms], + -en (suffix forming the infinitive form of verbs); while shore (noun) is from Middle Dutch schore, schare (“a prop, a stay”) (modern Dutch schoor), and Middle Low German schōre, schāre (“a prop, a stay; barrier; stockade”) (compare Old Norse skorða (“a prop, a stay”) (Norwegian skor, skorda)); further etymology unknown.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: shoren, schore, schōre
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ʃɔˈɹ‿ʌp/
- British English: /ʃɔːˈɹ‿ʌp/