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
These rules allow employees to seriously pump up their retirement savings, specifically by converting those after-tax savings to Roth dollars through the three-step megabackdoor Roth strategy.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 24, 2025
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
“And that’s when they pump up the air-conditioning in the gym for a little old-fashioned Culver Creek basketball. You can’t miss the first game of the year.”
From "Looking for Alaska" by John Green
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.
