Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Verb Phrase 131. The verb phrase today is to

  • jack up. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. We have three meanings and

  • we're going to give several examples to cover these three meanings. So the first

  • meaning means to raise something sharply. Okay. The second meaning means to raise.

  • the price of something, especially to raise the price of something a lot. In

  • the sense of like taking advantage of somebody or something or taking

  • advantage of a situation. And the third one jack up could be like to stimulate or to

  • excite. So let's look at the first example. Those college students jacked up

  • the music during the party. Yeah. So this could be a few ways. One it could be

  • raised they just simply raise the volume. A lot of college students like this they

  • like the music to be really loud and so they might jack up the volume. Raise the

  • volume a lot. They might be doing it in a sense of trying to stimulate people. To

  • to get people to dance more. Let's look at number two here. During the SARS crisis

  • some vendors jacked up the prices of medical masks. Yeah. I remember the SARS

  • crisis in the early 2000s. That was in Hong Kong and Taiwan. There's a lot of

  • vendors that still had supply left because a lot of people sold out of

  • supply quickly and those that still had supply left realized that they they could

  • raise the price. They could just take advantage of the situation and a lot of

  • them did. Some of them like doubled or tripled the normal price. So they we

  • could say that they jacked up the price. That's the way we would say it. Again

  • especially in this sort of situation. We think somebody's taking advantage. You

  • know, to make more while they can. To make a higher profit. Okay number three. A similar

  • idea. When gas prices hit all-time highs per barrel in 2008 , I think it was around 147,

  • 148 around that number. Many people accused some gas stations of

  • jacking up prices. Now and of course the prices were going up per barrel. So it's

  • normal that the prices at the pump was going up. But a lot of

  • people thought that you know some particular gas stations were taking even

  • more advantage. Because you , how could people judge. You know whether they

  • were just doing it at the normal rate of the price going up her barrel or were

  • they you know adding extra to that as well. Taking it again taking advantage of

  • the situation. So that's the way we would use it. When we say they're jacking up in

  • that sense. All right. Number four. He was all jacked up on drugs when he committed

  • that crime. Or this again is like stimulated or excited you know, when

  • they're taking the drugs to stimulate or excite their body. So in that sense, we

  • could say that somebody was jacked up on drugs. All right. Then the last one which is

  • probably maybe where this phrase actually comes from. We need to jack up

  • that car. So we can change that flat tire. Yeah. If you have a car the tool that you

  • use that's called a jack, that's the one that actually raises the car higher. So

  • you can lift it off the ground. So you can actually take the old flat tire off

  • and put another tire on. So that is called a jack and usually you have to

  • jack up the car. So that's you know, you, you go like this to raise the car off

  • the ground. So this is probably the meaning of where the term comes from. It

  • comes from the tool, the jack which every car needs to carry or supposed to carry

  • just in case they get a flat tire. Okay. Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope it's

  • clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Verb Phrase 131. The verb phrase today is to

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it