shoot up

shoot up (third-person singular simple present shoots up, present participle shooting up, simple past and past participle shot up)

1. (intransitive, sometimes figurative) To grow taller or larger rapidly.

   Our operating costs have shot up due to the fuel shortage.

   He was a small child, but shot up when he reached his teenage years.

   • 2024 July 29, Michael Goodier, “Olive oil fraud and mislabelling cases hit record high in EU”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     As a result, prices have shot up. One hundred kilos of extra virgin olive oil from Jaén in Spain cost €787 in November last year, up from €262.50 five years earlier, making olive oil a more attractive market for fraudsters.

2. (transitive) To fire many bullets or shells at.

   The terrorists decided to shoot up a convenience store.

   • 1899, Stephen Crane, chapter 1, in Twelve O'Clock:

     There was some laughter, and Roddle was left free to expand his ideas on the periodic visits of cowboys to the town. "Mason Rickets, he had ten big punkins a-sittin' in front of his store, an' them fellers from the Upside-down-F ranch shot 'em up […] ."

   • 2010, BioWare, Mass Effect 2 (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Dossier: The Justicar (Commercial Spaceport, Illium):

     Shepard: What do they do here that you don't like, Elnora?
     Elnora: I thought we'd be flying around the galaxy shooting up bad guys and stuff, right?
     Elnora: But no, they just sell red sand and illegal weapons tech. They even smuggled an Ardat-Yakshi off-world.

   • 2019 February 27, Drachinifel, 27:00 from the start, in The Battle of Samar - Odds? What are those?‎^[2], archived from the original on 3 November 2022:

     The Johnston emerges from a smokescreen to find the Haruna at close range. So of course it shoots up the battleship's superstructure whilst ducking back into the smoke as Kongō tries to take it out using its main battery.

3. (transitive) To use up (ammunition) by shooting.

   Most of our ammunition has now been shot up.

4. (intransitive, transitive) To inject (a drug) intravenously.

   This place is always full of smackheads shooting up.

5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see shoot,‎ up.

• shoot-'em-up
• shoot-em-up
• shoot-up

• Pushtoo, outshop, upshoot