pump up
Idioms-
Inflate with gas or air, as in This tire needs pumping up . [Late 1800s]
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Fill with enthusiasm, strength, and energy, as in The lively debate pumped us all up . Mary Wollstonecraft used this idiom in slightly different form in The Rights of Women (1792): “Lover-like phrases of pumped-up passion.”
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.
In April, those numbers came in at multi-year highs, with fuel prices at the pump up around 51 percent since the war began, and grocery prices at their highest level since 2023.
From Barron's ● May 13, 2026
Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni is the latest to pump up his S&P 500 target for 2026, raising it from 7,700 to 8,250 as he tracks analysts’ rising optimism about corporate profits.
From MarketWatch ● May 11, 2026
During an internal meeting at Starbucks’s Seattle headquarters in late July, his new hire, Mike Grams, sought to pump up corporate employees to support their work in stores, and the company’s broader turnaround strategy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 20, 2025
“Because if I had to deal with someone who I had to pump up, or I had to make him believe that he can do it, it would be a whole different process.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2025
When I went and stood by her side, she lifted her head, looked at me, and raised a hand, once, twice, as if to pump up words.
From "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" by Avi
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.
