jack up

Meaning

Verb

• To raise, hoist, or lift a thing using a jack, or similar means.
• To raise, increase, or accelerate; often said of prices, fees, or rates.
• To ruin; wreck; mess up; screw up; sometimes as a bowdlerized substitution for fuck up.
• To give up; to abandon (something, e.g. a job, contract)
• To organise something.
• To shoot, especially in the context of a poor shot opportunity.

Origin

• Sense of “hoist with a jack” is from 1885; then, “increase prices, etc.” (1904, American English); both ultimately from noun jack
• “Screw up, mess up” sense derived from, or influenced by fuck up, as a bowdlerization; also possibly influenced by jacked up
• First dialectal idiomatic meaning: “abandon, give up” (1873), possibly a corruption of chuck up, as chuck up the sponge (“give up, concede, give token of submission”)