to call up
209
2.5
- phrasal verb
- /kɔl ʌp/
:
llamar a
- She calls me up on the phone, asks me how I am... says to me, "Lenny..." in that way she used to.
I was like, you know what, I should call up whoever, right?
- I was like, you know what, I should call up whoever, right?
- And I'm like, OK, if you just called Taylor up, they're like, that'll work.
- And so he he calls up his his boss out in New York.
- My agent at the time calls me up and says, what are you doing?
- Think about calling up your friends to watch the game, right.
- And the first time they played it, people called up angry, take that crap off the air.
- So I called up Nathan and said, how can I help?
- And now in between that time, her aunt calls someone up and they come and collect jazz.
- So mum will call up and say, oh, I fancy my friend's mum.
- Then I called up my friends who I think got time to do.
- So Tim calls me up and he goes, OK, here's what we're thinking.
- What I'm saying is you're you're calling up Tim Cook and saying my iPhone jammed.
Examples
-
So I called up Nathan and said, how can I help?
-
My agent at the time calls me up and says, what are you doing?
-
We're going to call him up, see what he has to say.
-
I suppose I called you up tonight and told you that I love you.
-
Think about calling up your friends to watch the game, right.
-
Let me call him up, tell him that I came up here on my own.
-
So I call her up, and after talking to her on the phone for 10 minutes, she said I need to be there.
-
Her number's in the phone book, so call her up for all I care.
Fiction book (1994) -
I remembered this guy's number and I called him up and I said, I'm alone in New York.
-
I need to call up my mom to check how she's doing.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
To phone someone to speak with them
∞
2.5
To communicate with someone by phone or writing
378
1.7
To enter a phone number by pressing buttons or turning a control
294
1.0
To call someone on the phone
204
1.0
To call someone by telephone
93
1.0
To phone someone
20
1.0
To call someone to speak with them
1
2.2
To phone someone
How Direct
∞
1.0
209
2.5
- Texting
296
2.6
- Texting
724
1.0
- Informal
81
3.4
Surface Forms
Morphology
call + up
The sense 'to make available / retrieve' can be inferred from 'call' in the sense of 'summon' or 'invoke' combined with the particle 'up' meaning 'bring into view' or 'into an active state', so a learner who knows those constituent senses could plausibly guess the meaning. However, the particle meaning is variable across phrasal verbs and the specific uses (recalling a memory, displaying a file, mobilizing resources) are somewhat lexicalized and context-dependent, so the relation is not fully predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Call up comes from the simple image of call (shout or name) plus up — like shouting to someone above you to get their attention; that action became the everyday way to contact someone, so it now means 'to phone' someone.