jack up

verb

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”)

1. To raise, hoist, or lift a thing using a jack, or similar means.

   “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.”

2. To raise, increase, or accelerate; often said of prices, fees, or rates.

   “I can't believe they're going to jack up the price of gasoline again — and after they already raised it twenty cents a gallon!”

   “Although 4.1 million tickets were sold for the 2023 shows—including over 2 million on the first day, a new record—scalpers jacked up prices on the secondary market to more than $22,000.”

3. To ruin; wreck; mess up; screw up; sometimes as a bowdlerized substitution for fuck up.

   “I'm not letting him use my computer again; he always jacks it up.”

4. To give up; to abandon (something, e.g. a job, contract)

   “1881?, Garnet Walch, A Little Tin Plate, Google Books Says I, “Let's jack up, man alive, / An' try further down on the Creek!” / “All right!” says my mate, “but we'll drive / Right an' left to the end of this week.””

   “1888, Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms, chapter 19, Google Books Not but what I'd had a lot to bear, and took a deal of punishment before he jacked up.”

5. To organise something.
6. To shoot, especially in the context of a poor shot opportunity.
7. To improve or embellish on (something).

   “I jacked up the recipes with some fresh ingredients.”

8. To refuse to follow an order.
9. To criticize, discipline or reprimand.
10. To inject a drug into (oneself) intravenously.

    “And I've had scag, I've had speed / I've jacked up until I bleed / So what, so what?”

    “There is no good, objective, medical word for what I did next: I didn't depress the needle or plunge it down. I banged it in. I jacked up. I shot up.”