blow up

British  

verb

1. to explode or cause to explode

2. (tr) to increase the importance of (something)

   they blew the whole affair up

3. (intr) to come into consideration

   we lived well enough before this thing blew up

4. (intr) to come into existence with sudden force

   a storm had blown up

5. informal to lose one's temper (with a person)

6. informal (tr) to reprimand (someone)

7. informal (tr) to enlarge the size or detail of (a photograph)

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noun

1. an explosion

2. informal an enlarged photograph or part of a photograph

3. informal a fit of temper or argument

4. Also called: blowing up.  informal a reprimand

blow up Idioms  

1. Explode or cause to explode. For example, The squadron was told to blow up the bridge , or Jim was afraid his experiment would blow up the lab . The term is sometimes amplified, as in blow up in one's face . [Late 1500s]

2. Lose one's temper, as in I'm sorry I blew up at you . Mark Twain used this metaphor for an actual explosion in one of his letters (1871): “Redpath tells me to blow up. Here goes!” [ Colloquial ; second half of 1800s]

3. Inflate, fill with air, as in If you don't blow up those tires you're sure to have a flat . [Early 1400s]

4. Enlarge, especially a photograph, as in If we blow up this picture, you'll be able to make out the expressions on their faces . [c. 1930]

5. Exaggerate the importance of something or someone, as in Tom has a tendency to blow up his own role in the affair . This term applies the “inflate” of def. 3 to importance. It was used in this sense in England from the early 1500s to the 1700s, but then became obsolete there although it remains current in America.

6. Collapse, fail, as in Graduate-student marriages often blow up soon after the couple earn their degrees . [ Slang ; mid-1800s]

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

blow up

“But this time, with the overhang of the war, we think hedge funds might be continuing to blow up and their liquidation may not be completely over, so that’s going to create volatility.”

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 1, 2026

Before the experiment, Fermi—a brilliant mathematician—calculated the chance that the reaction would blow up Chicago.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026

In 2014 organisers had to make a swift U-turn over a bizarre plan to blow up the famous Red Road flats as part of the opening ceremony.

From BBC ● Jul. 16, 2026

"All the quantum perturbations that should blow up the value of the cosmological constant are rendered inert by this topology, which keeps the constant's value stable."

From Science Daily ● Jun. 19, 2026

The orders for munitions on the part of the accused, said Yutar melodramatically, were enough to blow up Johannesburg.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

Related Words

• blast
• bomb
• burst
• detonate
• dynamite
• erupt
• go off
• rupture
• shatter