cough up
English
Etymology
From cough + up.
Verb
cough up (third-person singular simple present coughs up, present participle coughing up, simple past and past participle coughed up)
- to expel from the lungs, throat, etc. by coughing
- He was coughing up blood.
- (idiomatic, transitive, informal) to reluctantly or unwillingly give
- (of money) to pay, disburse
- Do you think he'll be able to cough up the three grand by Tuesday?
- 2006, K. M. Soehnlein, You Can Say You Knew Me When, page 240:
- " […] Usually businessmen. Married, middle-aged guys who'll cough up fifty bucks to smoke my pole."
- (of other objects) to hand over, give.
- 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:
- "Anyhow, you go and cough it up and then we shall see."
- 2013, The Big Bang Theory, season 6, episode 14:
- Cough it up, Cooper.
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- (of money) to pay, disburse
- (idiomatic) to lose a competition by one's own mistakes, usually near the end of the contest
- That team had the game won, but they coughed it up in the end.
- (transitive, idiomatic) To spill, to fumble
- 2011, Tom Fordyce, Rugby World Cup 2011: England 12-19 France:
- England had never before come back to win from a margin of more than 12 points, and the errors continued to come thick and fast as Tom Croft became the latest to cough up the ball.
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Synonyms
- (to pay money (reluctantly)): shell out, fork out, fork over
Translations
to expel by coughing
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to pay money
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to lose by one's own mistakes
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to spill, fumble
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