use up

British  

verb

1. to finish (a supply); consume completely

2. to exhaust; wear out

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use up Idioms  

1. Consume completely, as in The kids used up all their money playing video games . [Late 1700s]

2. Exhaust, tire out, as in I'm totally used up from digging that hole . [ Colloquial ; mid-1800s]

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Example Sentences

"When patients arrive in a neurology clinic they have used up their internal reserve capacity, so the progression of weakness is often rapid."

From BBC

“We have come a long way in the last 10,000 years,” Mr. Ennos writes, though people are “using up stores of energy that had been captured by plants from sunlight over millions of years.”

From The Wall Street Journal

It was like he’d used up all his focus on the social studies test.

From Literature

Capacity constraints kept it from meeting all of its client computing demand, and its longer-term plans to boost Copilot capabilities used up a larger chunk of the remainder.

From Barron's

“Don’t use up your energy! And don’t tire the donkey, or it will stop and refuse to move!”

From Literature

Related Words

• clear
• consume
• deplete
• discharge
• drain
• drink
• dump
• escape
• evacuate
• exhaust
• gut
• leak
• purge
• run out
• unload
• vacate