chalk up
Britishverb
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to score or register (something)
we chalked up 100 in the game
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to credit (money) to an account etc (esp in the phrase chalk it up )
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Score or earn, as in She chalked up enough points to be seeded first in the tournament . This term alludes to recording accounts (and later, scores) in chalk on a slate. [c. 1700]
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Credit or ascribe, as They chalked their success up to experience . [First half of 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.
Sure, party leaders can try to chalk up this result to a one-off mistake.
From Slate ● Aug. 5, 2026
Around 300 National Trust staff and volunteers will be involved, carrying about 17 tonnes of fresh chalk up the steep hillside, which in places has a gradient of roughly one in three.
From BBC ● May 27, 2026
Given those gains, it would be hard to chalk up today’s moves to much more than profit taking.
From Barron's ● May 12, 2026
If he weren’t a trauma doctor, you might chalk up the missing headgear to romantic imagery and an homage to “Then Came Bronson.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 6, 2026
He began to chalk up a list of all the student’s names.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
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.
