fold up
Britishverb
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(tr) to make smaller or more compact
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(intr) to collapse, as with laughter or pain
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Fail, especially go out of business. For example, Three stores on Main Street have folded up .
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Collapse, break down. For example, When she told him about the dog's death, she folded up . This idiom alludes to closing or bringing an object into more compact form. [Early 1900s]
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The studios would rent for about $1,500 a month and weren’t that small, he said, given modular furniture—beds that fold up, closets that pop out.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 26, 2026
“When I’m at a restaurant, I will fold up the chopstick wrapper and build a little fort with the plates and chopsticks and, like, make stuff in my hands,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2024
But if that happens just in time for the genre to fold up for good, what was the point of all this frustration?
From Salon ● Feb. 4, 2024
Diagonal bracing in walls is necessary so they don’t rack and fold up like dominoes.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 11, 2023
Then he started to fold up the Spawn comic as a replacement.
From "When I Was the Greatest" by Jason Reynolds
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
