💳 To increase costs 🏳️ To raise up 🧵 To make quickly

to run up

47 4.0

Owe a lot of money quickly

phrasal verb
/rʌn ʌp/

: acumular

The period before your filing is not the time to run up additional debts.
run up debts

And then we peaked when Disney's fired its CEO for running up streaming losses too high.

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Examples

You're running up an enormous bill by not cooperating.

Brazil (1985)
They have run and are continuing to run up huge debts there.
And then we run up his credit card as far as we can push it.

Hustlers (2019)
As you can see, on her last night, she ran up a large bar tab.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019)
And for the past four years, they've just been running up my credit card.
How do you expect us ever to pay off the charges you're running up?

Fiction book (1996)
In 1997, the band had run up a deficit of $5.6 million on an annual budget of $50 million.

Fiction book (2002)
By living beyond their means, the Koreans ran up huge debts, as their country tumbled into crisis.

Academic text (1999)
She ran up her credit card bill after a night of shopping and dining out.
They found themselves running up significant debts while trying to renovate their house.

Synonyms

to stack up

vsto run up

29 4.0

Collect things over time until there is a large amount

increases debts quickly rather than slowly over time

to shoot up

vsto run up

25 4.1

Rise quickly to a much higher level

increases debts quickly as a building accumulation rather than a sudden spike

to rocket up

vsto run up

2 4.4

Increase very quickly to a much higher level

increases debts quickly but usually not as extreme or sharp

Antonyms

to reduce

∞ 1.6

To make something smaller in amount, size, or number

to pay off

269 2.7

Repay all the money you owe on a loan

How Much

to run up

47 4.0

to rack up

Informal

62 3.6

to amass

65 4.8

to accumulate

168 3.4

Surface Forms

run up infinitive

running up present participle

runs up third person singular

ran up past

run up past participle

Morphology

run + up

The particle 'up' clearly signals upward movement, so a learner who knows 'run' and 'up' could plausibly infer a sense like 'move something to a higher position.' However, the specific collocational meaning meaning 'hoist/raise (with ropes or pulleys)' and the use of 'run' in this causative/nautical sense is somewhat lexicalized and not fully predictable from the constituents, so prior exposure helps.

Etymology

The verb run up comes from the image of numbers or bills getting higher, as if they run up a column or pile. That's why it means 'to accumulate' or 'to build up debts'.