to stack up
7
4.0
- phrasal verb
- /stæ k ʌp/
:
acumular
- Well, we've had frozen pizza all day long, but the real test is to see if it stacks up to the real deal.
- bills stack up
- dishes stack up
- keeps stacking up
Tiny little risks stack up into bigger risks.
- Tiny little risks stack up into bigger risks.
- It's just all, it's all stacking up on me.
- I'm like, look, all of the, you know, you, you stack up all these wins and then you get a couple of LS.
- Whether it's touchdowns, points, or yards, Just make your call and watch your winning stack up.
- And so these fears start stacking up and you notice you release less and less and less, or maybe not at all.
- That way I can help the boats kind of stack up a little bit.
- If you don't fix this leaky bucket, they're never going to be able to stack up.
- The enemy of of soul really can be just stacking up too much stuff on to a track and then you lose your way.
- Those are words that speak to the deepest core of your being materially, for that matter, 'cause everything stacks up.
Examples
-
But how does 2012 stack up against previous House elections?
Blog text (26) -
His unpaid bills started to stack up, causing him stress about his finances.
-
And after a while, the the data just really started to stack up one way rather than the other.
-
Take a look at these five expensive car designs and see how they stack up with costs.
Blog text (32) -
What happens when things start to stack up is everything starts to feel urgent.
-
Soon, lunch and dinner dishes begin to stack up too.
Fiction book (1994) -
The differences were stacking up pretty fast.
Fiction book (1990) -
But what about actually seeing how your classroom stacks up to the others around the world?
Blog text (17) -
We can see how well my anecdotes stack up to actual research done on drivers and cyclists.
Blog text (23) -
How do Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon stack up when it comes to 4G LTE coverage?
Blog text (26)
Synonyms
207
3.0
Increase slowly over time
174
3.4
To gather more and more of something over time
87
2.6
To put money aside little by little for something you want
83
3.1
To put things on top of each other until they make a heap
54
3.6
To collect many points or wins
39
2.9
Buy a large supply of something to use later
32
4.0
Owe a lot of money quickly
27
6.6
To slowly increase over time, for example money or benefits
27
2.5
Buy a large amount of something to use later
23
5.1
To collect things together to make one total
22
3.7
Collect small amounts until they become a larger total
Antonyms
How Much
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 (meaning to collect or build a larger amount) comes from the picture of small items being added again and again until they stack up into a tall pile, so it now means 'to gather or build up over time'.