shoot-up

[ shoot-uhp ]

nounSlang.
  1. an act or instance of injecting an addictive drug intravenously.

Origin of shoot-up

1
First recorded in 1965–70; noun use of verb phrase shoot up

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use shoot-up in a sentence

  • Other children would shoot up like corn stalks, but I stayed right where I had been in the months and years past.

    David Lannarck, Midget | George S. Harney
  • You see, we had no town to shoot up, so we just punctured the scenery.

    The Highgrader | William MacLeod Raine
  • An honorable member who had been expelled for the use of too strong language, returned to "shoot up" the House.

    Humanly Speaking | Samuel McChord Crothers
  • The posts are poles cut from the trees' branches and when stuck in the ground they shoot up so rapidly that they soon are trees.

  • Such beginnings made people think that he should soon shoot up into a giant.

British Dictionary definitions for shoot up

shoot up

verb(adverb)
  1. (intr) to grow or become taller very fast

  2. (tr) to hit with a number of shots

  1. (tr) to spread terror throughout (a place) by lawless and wanton shooting

  2. (tr) slang to inject (someone, esp oneself) with (a drug, esp heroin)

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Idioms and Phrases with shoot-up

shoot-up

Grow or get taller very rapidly, as in She's really shot up in the last year, and now she's taller than her mother. [First half of 1500s]

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.