ring up
Britishverb
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to make a telephone call (to)
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(tr) to record on a cash register
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(tr) to chronicle; record
to ring up another success
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to begin a theatrical performance
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(often foll by on) to make a start (on)
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Record, especially by means of a cash register, as in They had already rung up the sale so I decided not to get the extra items . [c. 1930] Although older cash registers usually signaled a recorded sale with the ringing of a bell, the idiom survives in the age of computers.
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Accomplish, achieve, as in They rang up an impressive string of victories .
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.
Did he think I’d asked her to come—left my post and rushed to ring up my movie-star friend so she could watch me march around in bathing suits?
From Literature
"We had lots of people ringing up, asking whether this was true", something the "older generations" had been arguing with each other about, he said.
From BBC
"When I rang up in October, I gave them my P60 figures and they could have just calculated the refund, and given it to me in October," she said.
From BBC
Cars lined up and Swig employees walked from customer to customer, scribbling orders on sticky notes and ringing up sales with a Casio register.
It could ring up $11 billion in peak yearly sales, analysts project.
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.
