to stack up
8
3.2
- phrasal verb
- /stæ k ʌp/
:
apilar
- You have a cargo ship full of tons and tons of these stacked up cargo containers.
- stacked up boxes
- stacked up to the ceiling
- stacked up on top
Then you can stack them up and store them or reuse them.
- Then you can stack them up and store them or reuse them.
- Did I perhaps see you through a wall of stacked up furniture?
- So if that's the case, then here's how we stack it up.
- We'll stack these up here and you can get some idea of how much stuff has just come in.
- We're filling it up around the bow, we're stacking it up on top here just so the radar turns and then from that level all the way back, it's that high.
- They started stacking up the dead bodies at the top of that hill.
- And so in a city, it might not be the best idea to be stacking up trash bags.
Examples
-
Now why don't you guys stack up some of the boxes, and we'll move things around.
-
They stacked up the two substances to form a superlattice, a sandwich of layers only a few nanometers thick, and they had a clear aim in doing this.
Blog text (17) -
We'll stack these up here and you can get some idea of how much stuff has just come in.
-
-Stack up about a half dozen of these.
-
Stack them up along there.
-
Then you can stack them up and store them or reuse them.
-
Well, you can start by... stacking these up on the bench for me.
-
You can see them all stacked up, kind of like pennies stacked together.
-
He keeps his baseball cards in plastic sleeves, in notebooks, and he stacks them all up beside him when he watches important games.
Fiction book (2002) -
After collecting the old magazines, I decided to stack up them neatly on the shelf.
Synonyms
255
1.2
To put things in a heap or stack
138
1.6
To put things in a neat pile one on top of another
83
3.1
To put things on top of each other until they make a heap
14
2.4
To put things into a pile
1
2.5
Put things into a pile
Antonyms
How Neat
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to accumulate' is directly derivable from combining 'stack' (to pile items) with 'up' (indicating upward increase or completion): piling things up naturally leads to a larger amount over time. This compositional motion/increase pattern is common cross-linguistically and follows a standard English verb+particle meaning, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would likely infer the MWE's sense.
Etymology
Stack up comes from the simple image of putting things one on top of another: you make a stack and lift things up into a neat pile, so it's used to mean 'to arrange things in a neat pile'.