throw up

British  

verb

1. to give up; abandon, relinquish

2. to build or construct hastily

3. to reveal; produce

   every generation throws up its own leaders

4. informal (also intr) to vomit

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throw up Idioms  

1. Vomit, as in The new drug makes many patients throw up . [First half of 1700s]

2. Abandon, relinquish, as in After the results of the poll came in, she threw up her campaign for the Senate .

3. Construct hurriedly, as in The builder threw up three houses in a matter of a few months . [Late 1500s]

4. throw it up to . Criticize, upbraid, as in Dad was always throwing it up to the boys that they were careless and messy . [Early 1800s]

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

throw up

This doesn’t mean, however, that parenting doesn’t matter, or that we should throw up our hands and say, “What’s the point?”

From Slate ● Aug. 11, 2026

They throw up, and if we play it, we’ll have to have them here, and they’ll throw up on the console in the recording studio, and we don’t want them.

From Salon ● Aug. 10, 2026

The gigantic new format of the World Cup was always going to throw up a few wrinkles.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 24, 2026

Lyndon Dykes looked, for a second, as if he was going to throw up.

From BBC ● Jun. 20, 2026

To bring them into balance, Dr. Harlow prescribes two powerful drugs—an "emetic" to make Phineas throw up and a "purgative," a powerful laxative, to evacuate his bowels.

From "Phineas Gage" by John Fleischman