pump up

1. Inflate with gas or air, as in This tire needs pumping up . [Late 1800s]

2. 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

She had a wealth of Dale Carnegie-esque aphorisms to pump up her young charge, such as “put on your magic shoes,” or “Mind is in every cell of the body. Thoughts are everything.”

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Home players will do whatever they can to pump up the crowd, while the visiting side always relishes any opportunity to hit back.

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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.

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“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.”

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The company can then sell new merchandise from the live-action films and pump up interest and familiarity with the characters.

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Related Words

• block 
• clog 
• close 
• cram 
• crowd 
• furnish 
• lade 
• load 
• overflow 
• pack 
• permeate 
• saturate 
• store 
• stuff 
• supply 
• swell 
• top