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Glite Dictionary
📞 To phone 🪖 To order to serve 💻 To access information 💭 To remember 🗣️ To bring for discussion 🪖 An order to serve
to call up

to call up

209 2.5
To phone someone
  • 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?

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Examples

  • So I called up Nathan and said, how can I help?

    MIT OpenCourseWare

  • My agent at the time calls me up and says, what are you doing?

    Film Courage

  • 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.

    Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy

  • Let me call him up, tell him that I came up here on my own.

    This Could Be the Night (1957)

  • So I call her up, and after talking to her on the phone for 10 minutes, she said I need to be there.

    Blue Like Jazz (2012)

  • 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

to call
vsto call up
∞ 1.0

To phone someone to speak with them

focuses only on reaching someone via a voice connection between devices
to contact
vsto call up
∞ 2.5

To communicate with someone by phone or writing

is specifically about reaching someone by a voice connection
to dial
vsto call up
378 1.7

To enter a phone number by pressing buttons or turning a control

is about speaking to someone by voice rather than entering numbers
to ring
vsto call up
  • UK
294 1.0

To call someone on the phone

is the phrasal form rather than the one-word verb
to phone
vsto call up
204 1.0

To call someone by telephone

is the phrasal form rather than a single-word verb
to make a call
vsto call up
93 1.0

To phone someone

is the phrasal form rather than a single shorter verb
to telephone
vsto call up
20 1.0

To call someone to speak with them

is the phrasal form rather than the single-word option
to give a ring
vsto call up
1 2.2

To phone someone

is the phrasal form rather than a different short phrase

How Direct

visit
∞ 1.0
to call up
209 2.5
to text
  • Texting
296 2.6
email
  • Texting
724 1.0
to send a message
  • Informal
81 3.4

Surface Forms

call up infinitive
called up past
called up past participle
calling up present participle
calls up third person singular

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.