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Glite Dictionary
to ring up

to ring up

17 2.8
To enter items and prices into a cash register when someone buys them
  • phrasal verb
  • /rɪŋ ʌp/
translation icon : pasar por caja
  • In a seamless move, the waitress takes the bill, rings up the sale, and shouts, "Next."
  • ring up sales
  • ring up purchases
  • ringing up customers

Nice little chat guy who rings us up is a dude has nail Polish, rings us up.

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Examples

  • The clerk is busy ringing up stuff at the cash register.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • As the woman at the register rang up her purchase, the total came to $8.39.

    Blog text (8)

  • So, if you like, I can ring it up for you now.

    The Chumscrubber (2005)

  • - Can you ring it up for me?

    Jackie Brown (1997)

  • I'll just ring this up for you.

    Positive I.D. (1986)

  • Then she finished ringing up their purchases and gave them the receipt.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • But he stayed quiet, hovering near his cash register to ring up the occasional sale.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • I ignored his shenanigans and proceeded to ring up the customers in my queue.

    Blog text (12)

  • The clerk rings up a sale for Bernzy in a shop crammed with film, cameras, lenses...

    Fiction book (1992)

  • After scanning each item, the cashier will ring up your total at the register.

Synonyms

to check out
vsto ring up
38 2.2

To pay for items you buy at a store

records the sale by entering it on a cash register or till

Surface Forms

ring up infinitive
ringing up present participle
rings up third person singular
rang up past
rung up past participle

Morphology

ring + up

The retail sense 'to record the sale on a cash register' is not derivable from 'ring' (commonly 'to call' or 'to cause a bell to sound') plus the particle 'up' (completion/operation). A B1 learner who knows the constituents would most likely interpret 'ring up' as 'call up' or causing a sound; the till-related meaning is idiomatic/occupational (historically linked to a cash‑register bell) and thus not transparently compositional.

Etymology

Ring up comes from old shop cash registers that made a bell sound when a sale was entered; the clerk would press the keys, the machine would ring, and the sale was written on the register, so ring up came to mean 'to record the sale'.