to live it up
27
7.2
- phrasal verb
- Informal
:
vivir a lo grande
- The concert was amazing, and I really lived it up with my friends all night.
- really live it up
- let's live it up
- live it up, kid
She was living it up, living up her single life, OK.
- She was living it up, living up her single life, OK.
- Come in a few days early, you know, let's live it up, man.
- And, you know, roughly speaking, we're watching our elders live it up in a way that doesn't make sense to the rest of us.
- He's having the time of his life now, Steve Davis full circle, your calm down and he's out fucking living it up and he's like giving it large.
- Yeah, you know, where it's like, yo-yo, yo-yo, yo-yo, like bro, just fucking, you know, live it up, suck it down, live it up and suck it down.
- I mean the numbers do not dictate that, but I'm I'm saying like you like it's a city girl summer you out here living it up.
Examples
-
The couple who owns this house is taking a year off and living it up in Hawaii, or some such thing.
Fiction book (1993) -
You could be living it up, instead of being the sort of undignified person desperately insisting on your "youth."
Blog text (7) -
Living today is so much fun, so I live it up every day.
-
And we're living it up.
-
Some want to travel and live it up, not me.
Blog text (23) -
And to think some people go to Las Vegas to live it up.
Blog text (23) -
I bet those royals really live it up.
-
I wouldn't be in the black in the next decade anyway, so I might as well live it up, right?
Blog text (1) -
Now that I'm out of her life, I'm certain she's really living it up now.
Blog text (18) -
Live it up, Alex.
Synonyms
3
7.2
To have fun and forget your worries
To celebrate and enjoy yourself loudly at a big party
To spend more money to enjoy something very fancy, like a hotel or dinner
Antonyms
How Festive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The core verb 'live' (to have a way of life) plus the particle 'up' (suggesting intensification or doing something to the full) gives a partial clue that the phrase means to live fully or exuberantly, but the dummy pronoun 'it' and the specific sense of celebrating/spending extravagantly are idiomatic and not fully predictable. Cross-linguistic equivalents exist but vary, so learners who know the words may guess a related meaning but would likely need prior exposure to grasp the exact sense.
Etymology
Live it up may come from the image of turning your life up like a radio or a bright light, with live as your life and up meaning higher or louder. That's why it means 'to enjoy yourself' in a big, often expensive, way.