boot up

Idioms  

1. Start a computer, as in When you've booted up, it's best not to turn off the computer until you're done for the day. The term, dating from the late 1970s, was a shortening of bootstrap, another computer idiom referring to using one set of instructions to load another set of instructions. Also see log in.

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

boot up

So every day after school, I’d sprint down to my family’s basement and boot up our enormous Gateway 2000 computer.

From Slate ● Aug. 12, 2025

These are the words that greet players when they boot up Abubakar Salim's debut video game - Tales of Kenzera: Zau.

From BBC ● Apr. 22, 2024

The region boasts the largest reserves of lithium in the world, which make up the lithium-ion batteries that boot up the electronic devices used by billions around the globe.

From National Geographic ● Jan. 11, 2024

Students at the Greenville, N.C., university say when Polito, 67, would boot up his computer screen, there was always a Las Vegas-themed backdrop.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2023

The computer would still boot up, but it couldn’t read the drive.

From "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah