to backed up
29
3.3
- phrasal verb
- /bækt ʌp/
:
atascarse
- We're backed up today.
There's one where there's an exit that backs up.
- There's one where there's an exit that backs up.
- So I'm grafting through through as well, you know, but the pipes going through could have led to believe that this is the tunnel all backed up.
- He said it felt like a weight was lifted off him when the dark smoke backed up, but he felt sick right away and the light from my flashlight made the sick feeling increase.
Examples
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Sorry, we're a little backed up today.
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They say traffic is backed up for hours so we're not going to be able to make it to our flight.
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Jesus, I was, I was just there last night, backed up in traffic.
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Route 16 was all backed up.
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And, of course, everybody's backed up, waiting, waiting, waiting.
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To recap our top story, Route 23 was backed up for almost nine hours today.
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Even this early, the Laguna Beach traffic was backed up on Pacific Coast Highway.
Fiction book (1995) -
Yeah, we're backed up.
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Traffic is backed up for miles due to the road construction.
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We were stuck in a vehicle that was backed up by an accident on the highway.
Synonyms
1
4.6
Unable to move because of very heavy traffic
Antonyms
How Congested
Surface Forms
Morphology
back + up
The phrasal verb 'back up' in the traffic sense (vehicles queued or delayed) is only partly predictable from 'back' (to move backward) and the particle 'up' — the combination hints at accumulation or reversing movement but does not directly yield the specific meaning 'become congested/queued'. Additionally, 'back up' has several different senses (reverse, support, copy, become congested), so the traffic sense is a language-specific extension that learners may not reliably infer without exposure. These factors make the expression partially but not fully transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Backed up gives a simple picture: imagine cars stuck on a road, one behind the other so they build 'up' at the 'back'. That's why backed up means 'delayed' or 'stopped' because of too much traffic or a blockage.