to buy up
46
4.1
- phrasal verb
- /baɪ ʌp/
:
acaparar
- In an effort to monopolize the market, the conglomerate started to buy up smaller companies.
- buy up land
- buy up companies
Redditors got to work buying up GameStop stock.
- Redditors got to work buying up GameStop stock.
- So then they come in and they buy up those houses.
- So Samosa, instead of rebuilding the city, he's buying up all the land.
- In some cases they bought up shares cheaply from their employees.
- They can conquer by being CEOs of mega corporations that buy up all of their competitors.
- It reminds me of when new countries are born and people buy up real estate.
- No, no, I think most of our lands being bought up by Chinese right now.
- Multiple companies now copying the playbook where you just basically buy up a bunch of Bitcoin.
- And, you know, there's mountains that the UN is going to buy up and then sell off and develop.
- And so we've got these, this checkered past for a company that now buys up Monsanto.
- The big money, the real money on the planet has been buying up water rights.
- They're paid by the brand to go and get the best deals possible and buy up ad space.
- They would move into a neighborhood, bring the value of the neighborhood down, and then buy up the other places and then bring it back up.
Examples
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The big money, the real money on the planet has been buying up water rights.
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The one signal example of this is when Bertelsmann, a German company, bought up Pantheon books.
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I went home and I basically bought up the entire collection.
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So then they come in and they buy up those houses.
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Oh, we're buying up sports movies like crazy.
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People bought up everything they could get their hands on.
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The Russians have been buying up buildings all over town, including this one.
Fiction book (1999) -
Some of these projects have long lead times, especially when developers buy up land many years before they build on it.
Academic text (2006) -
Local people thought him foolish for buying up the claims to the old Paradise Mine.
Fiction book (2001) -
At the peak of the Japanese bubble, when Japan was buying up America, we were worried about our competitiveness.
Synonyms
222
3.8
Gain control of a company, organization, or government
49
3.5
Pay money to own a company or a partner's share to gain control
Antonyms
How Much
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to buy all or most of something' follows a regular verb+particle pattern where 'up' conveys completeness or totality (compare 'use up', 'eat up'), so a learner who knows 'buy' and the completive sense of 'up' can derive the MWE meaning. This is a common, productive construction in English and therefore readily predictable for B1 learners who know the constituents.
Etymology
Buy up comes from a simple image of a buyer going from shelf to shelf and buying everything until the shop is empty, with buy showing the action and up showing it is done completely. So, it means 'to buy all or most of something', often to take control of a supply or market.