jack up

Verb

jack up (third-person singular simple present jacks up, present participle jacking up, simple past and past participle jacked up)

1. To raise, hoist, or lift a thing using a jack, or similar means.
   • He jacked the car up to change the tire
   • The oil rig can be jacked up higher when the hydraulic legs touch the sea floor.
2. (informal) To raise, increase, or accelerate; often said of prices, fees, or rates.
   • I can't believe they're going to jack up the price of gasoline again — and after they already raised it twenty cents a gallon!
   • Although 4.1 million tickets were sold for the 2023 shows—including over 2 million on the first day, a new record—scalpers jacked up prices on the secondary market to more than $22,000.2023 December 6, Sam Lansky, “Person of Year 2023 : Taylor Swift”, in Time, archived from the original on 06 Dec 2023
3. (colloquial) To ruin; wreck; mess up; screw up; sometimes as a bowdlerized substitution for fuck up.
   • I'm not letting him use my computer again; he always jacks it up.
4. (Australia, West-Country, dialectal, intransitive, obsolete, transitive) To give up; to abandon (something, e.g. a job, contract)
   • 1881?, Garnet Walch, A Little Tin Plate, Google Books
     Says I, “Let's jack up, man alive, / An' try further down on the Creek!” / “All right!” says my mate, “but we'll drive / Right an' left to the end of this week.”
   • Not but what I'd had a lot to bear, and took a deal of punishment before he jacked up.1888, Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms, chapter 19, Google Books

   Synonyms:

   jig up, throw up, chuck up, discontinue, jack in

5. (New Zealand) To organise something.
6. (colloquial) To shoot, especially in the context of a poor shot opportunity.
7. (slang, transitive) To improve or embellish on (something).
   • I jacked up the recipes with some fresh ingredients.
8. (informal) To refuse to follow an order.
9. (informal) To criticize, discipline or reprimand.
10. (ambitransitive, slang) To inject a drug into (oneself) intravenously.
    • And I've had scag, I've had speed / I've jacked up until I bleed / So what, so what?1981, So What? (Anti-Nowhere League song)
    • There is no good, objective, medical word for what I did next: I didn't depress the needle or plunge it down. I banged it in. I jacked up. I shot up.2021, Ben Timberlake, High Risk