throw up
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Forms: form: throws up
form: throwing up
form: threw up
form: thrown up
Etymology: The vomit sense is a clipping of throw up one's accounts (18th century), from earlier idiom cast up one's accounts (15th century).
Senses: examples: text: Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
ref: 1823, Clement Clarke Moore, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas:
text: The servant (who) had first entered had thrown up the window […]
ref: 1910, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot:
glosses: Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see throw, up.
examples: text: The baby threw up all over my shirt.
text: That cat is always throwing up hairballs.
text: I wonder what happens if you throw up in zero gravity.
ref: 1988 September 19, Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes (comic):
topics: bacteriology
biology
microbiology
natural-sciences
glosses: To vomit.
examples: text: This system has thrown up a few problems.
glosses: To produce or reveal something new or unexpected.
examples: text: The car wheels threw up a shower of stones.
glosses: To cause something such as dust or water to rise into the air.
examples: text: Every depression in the ground had been utilized; every rise taken advantage of, to dig rifle-pits or throw up a little earthwork, surrounded with sand-bags […]
ref: 1872, Every Saturday, page 96:
text: In other words, a business can throw up a huge detour sign in the way of the government.
ref: 2001, Diane Kennedy, Loop-Holes of the Rich: How the Rich Legally Make More Money & Pay Less Tax, Warner Books,, →ISBN, page 70:
text: The deal was that if anyone started catching feelings, he could throw up a stop sign and the other would honor it.
ref: 2007, Marissa Monteilh, Dr. Feelgood, Kensington Books, →ISBN, page 27:
synonyms: run up
knock up
;
throw together
knock together
slap together
coordinate_terms: whip up
glosses: To erect, particularly hastily.
examples: text: “No!” returned the spy. “I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular with the outrageous mob, that I only got away from England at the risk of being ducked to death, and that Cly was so ferreted up and down, that he never would have got away at all but for that sham. Though how this man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of wonders to me.”
ref: 1859, Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities:
text: In 1944, believing, as people in Leeds tended to do, that flying bombs or no flying bombs, things were better Down South, Dad threw up his job with the Co-op and we migrated to Guildford.
ref: 2011, Alan Bennett, “Baffled at a Bookcase”, in London Review of Books, XXXIII.15:
glosses: To give up, abandon something.
examples: text: Why don't you go on and throw up ya gang sign. Represent your hood, homey?
ref: 2005, Brandon Bennett, Moon in Gemini, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 56:
glosses: To display a gang sign using the hands.
glosses: To enlarge, as a picture reflected on a screen.
topics: media
printing
publishing
glosses: To give special prominence to a line or lines.
Synonyms: sense: vomit
word: chuck up
sense: vomit
word: hurl
sense: vomit
word: upchuck
sense: vomit
word: vomit
sense: erect hastily
word: knock up
Derived terms: throw up the sponge