blow up

verb

Etymology: From Middle English blow up, blowe up, dissimilated forms of earlier Middle English upblowen (> English upblow), equivalent to blow + up. Compare West Frisian opblaze (“to blow up, inflate”), Dutch opblazen (“to blow up, inflate”), German aufblähen and aufblasen (“to blow up, inflate”), Swedish blåsa upp (“to blow up, inflate”), Icelandic blása upp (“to blow up, inflate”), Gothic 𐌿𐍆𐌱𐌻𐌴𐍃𐌰𐌽 (ufblēsan, “to blow or puff up”).

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blow, up.

   “See if you can blow the bubbles up the staircase.”

   “Trying blowing up it at an angle instead of directly across it.”

2. To explode or be destroyed by explosion.

   “Why do cars in movies always blow up when they fall off a cliff?”

   “In dense fog at about 10.25 p.m. on the night of October 25, two tank barges carrying petroleum [...] missed the entrance to the docks at Sharpness and were carried up the River Severn by the incoming tide. They collided with one of the piers of the Severn Bridge, carrying the Berkeley Road-Lydney branch of the Western Region, and as a result of the collision both tankers blew up.”

3. To cause (something or someone) to explode, or to destroy (something) or maim or kill (someone) by means of an explosion.

   “We had to blow up the bridge before the enemy army arrived.”

   “More civilians than soldiers have been blown up by anti-personnel mines.”

4. To inflate or fill with air, either by literally blowing or by using a pump.

   “For the school science project, each student will blow up a balloon and then tie it closed.”

   “never did it ring more loudly than that night, as I watched her draw back the blanket of moss from the coals, blow up the fire, and cook the evening meal.”

5. To represent something as being more important or serious than it actually is; to inflate; to exaggerate.

   “The foreign secretary David Miliband's emphasis that this is purely a consular matter is intended to forestall an attempt by Iranian hardliners to blow the incident up.”

   “Lena insists the moment wasn't as awkward as it looked, and the coverage blew it up to be something way bigger than it actually was IRL.”

6. To enlarge or zoom in on.

   “Blow up the picture to get a better look at their faces.”

7. To fail disastrously.

   “So I wish you luck, but don't come crying to me when it blows up in your face.”

8. To increase without bound as a function argument or parameter approaches a certain value; to tend toward infinity; to approach infinity as a limit.

   “The quantity 1/x blows up as x approaches zero.”

   “And these loops have a tendency to blow up, to borrow more and more energy by becoming smaller and smaller, eventually borrowing an infinite amount of energy. When a calculation returns an infinite answer, this usually means something has gone badly wrong.”

9. To become popular very quickly.

   “This album is about to blow up; they’re being promoted on MTV.”

   “You know you blew up when the women rush your stands And try to touch your hands like some screaming Usher fans […]”

10. To suddenly get very angry, to lose one's temper.

    “Dad blew up at me when I told him I was pregnant.”

11. To become much more fat or rotund in a short space of time.
12. To inflate, as with pride, self-conceit, etc.; to puff up.

    “to blow someone up with flattery”

    “blown up with high conceits engendering pride”

13. To excite.

    “to blow up a contention”

14. To scold violently, blow up at.

    “[…] did not choose to comply with her wishes. Upon which Mrs. Basset, in the language of the Old Bailey, nabbed the rust; insisted upon some liquor, would not quit the house without it, and began to blow up the hostess and blast the rose.”

    “#*: I have blown him up well — nobody can say I wink at what he does.”

15. To blow the whistle.
16. To succumb to oxygen debt and lose the ability to maintain pace in a race.
17. To overwhelm through unexpectedly high demand, activity, usage, traffic volume, etc.

    “I blew up another department's API servers – did I screw up or should they have more protections?”

18. To overwhelm through unexpectedly high demand, activity, usage, traffic volume, etc.

    “blow up the spot;   blow up someone's spot”

    “Be cool! Keep it on the down low. Don't blow up my spot!”

19. To overwhelm through unexpectedly high demand, activity, usage, traffic volume, etc.

    “blow up someone's phone”

    “I had to mute the notifications for that group text. Those hooligans kept blowing up my phone.”

20. To be overwhelmed by unexpectedly high demand, usage, activity, traffic volume, etc.

    “There were so many incoming enemy planes that our monitoring and notification system blew up before the base was even able to respond.”

21. To be overwhelmed by unexpectedly high demand, usage, activity, traffic volume, etc.

    “Damn, my spot blew up. Time to find the next one.”

22. To be overwhelmed by unexpectedly high demand, usage, activity, traffic volume, etc.

    “one's phone is blowing up”

    “I had to mute the notifications for that group text. My phone kept blowing up every day.”

23. To cause a malodorous smell by flatulation, defecation, etc.

    “Don't go in there...I really blew it up.”

24. To begin; to gather; to form.

    “A storm is blowing up in the north.”

25. To use an intoxicating drug; to get high.