These are words with multiple senses, but where the quotes and use examples have been strewn about into the most inappropriate places.

throw up edit

Verb edit

scrambled (third-person singular simple present throws up, present participle throwing up, simple past threw up, past participle thrown up)

Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see throw,‎ up.
- 2011, Alan Bennett, "Baffled at a Bookcase", London Review of Books, XXXIII.15:
  In 1944, believing, as people in Leeds tended to do, that flying bombs or no flying bombs, things were better Down South, Dad threw up his job with the Co-op and we migrated to Guildford.
(now colloquial) To vomit.
- 1910, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
  The servant (who) had first entered had thrown up the window […]
- 2005, Brandon Bennett, Moon in Gemini, iUniverse,, →ISBN, page 56:
  Why don't you go on and throw up ya gang sign. Represent your hood, homey?
- 2007, Marissa Monteilh, Dr. Feelgood, Kensington Books,, →ISBN, page 27:
  The deal was that if anyone started catching feelings, he could throw up a stop sign and the other would honor it.
To produce something new or unexpected.
The baby threw up all over my shirt.
To cause something such as dust or water to rise into the air.
- 1859, Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities:
  “No!” returned the spy. “I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular with the outrageous mob, that I only got away from England at the risk of being ducked to death, and that Cly was so ferreted up and down, that he never would have got away at all but for that sham. Though how this man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of wonders to me.”
(transitive, chiefly dated) To erect, particularly hastily.
This system has thrown up a few problems.

The car wheels threw up a shower of stones.
(transitive, intransitive) To give up, abandon something.
- 1872, Every Saturday (page 96)
  Every depression in the ground had been utilized; every rise taken advantage of, to dig rifle-pits or throw up a little earthwork, surrounded with sand-bags […]
To display a gang sign using the hands.
- 2001, Diane Kennedy, Loop-Holes of the Rich: How the Rich Legally Make More Money & Pay Less Tax, Warner Books,, →ISBN, page 70:
  In other words, a business can throw up a huge detour sign in the way of the government.
(dated, transitive) To enlarge, as a picture reflected on a screen.
That cat is always throwing up hairballs.

blow up edit

Verb edit

scrambled (third-person singular simple present blows up, present participle blowing up, simple past blew up, past participle blown up)

(literally, transitive) To blow something upward.
We had to blow up the bridge before the enemy army arrived.
- 2014 September 11, Alexis Petridis, quoting Kelly Brook, “A freedom fighter for our time: Kelly Brook will not be silenced over Danny Cipriani”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:
  “Danny Cipriani is blowing up my phone saying: ‘I’m going to sue you’,” she said, shortly before announcing her willingness to go to prison over the issue.
(intransitive) To explode or be destroyed by explosion.
- 2002, Joan Barfoot, Critical injuries, page 118:
  So I wish you luck, but don't come crying to me when it blows up in your face.
(transitive) To cause (something or someone) to explode, or to destroy (something) or maim or kill (someone) by means of an explosion.
- 2012, Chris Hicks, Ebony Chronicles of Elevation, volume 1, →ISBN, page 181:
  Not knowing the whereabouts of his daughter, Tavon blew up her phone without once getting a response.
Blow up the picture to get a better look at their faces.

Don't go in there...I really blew it up.
(transitive) To inflate or fill with air, either by literally blowing or using an air pump.
- 2007, “Fucc & Git Up”, in DZ (lyrics), Sleepless City Livin, performed by DZ feat. Gangsta Nutt, from 1:59:
  I am the man / So I’m sitting in the VIP / with my mains / We twisted up some Crip / but I am ready to dip / to the telly with my relly / cuz these fuckin git up chicks keep blowin up my celly.
(transitive) To enlarge or zoom in.
- 2013, Michelle McKinney Hammond, The Real Deal on Love and Men, →ISBN:
  He has never officially said that we are in a relationship, but he blows up my phone night and day, always wanting to know where I am.
(intransitive) To fail disastrously.
This album is about to blow up; they’re being promoted on MTV.
(slang, intransitive) To become popular very quickly.
- 1961 January, “Talking of Trains: The Severn Bridge disaster”, in Trains Illustrated, pages 3, 5:
  In dense fog at about 10.25 p.m. on the night of October 25, two tank barges carrying petroleum [...] missed the entrance to the docks at Sharpness and were carried up the River Severn by the incoming tide. They collided with one of the piers of the Severn Bridge, carrying the Berkeley Road-Lydney branch of the Western Region, and as a result of the collision both tankers blew up.
(slang) To suddenly get very angry.
Why do cars in movies always blow up when they fall off a cliff?
(slang, intransitive) To become much more fat or rotund in a short space of time.
- 1999, Eminem, My Name Is (song)
  You know you blew up when the women rush your stands / And try to touch your hands like some screaming Usher fans […]
(transitive, dated) To inflate, as with pride, self-conceit, etc.; to puff up.
- 2009, RM Johnson, Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can't Commit, →ISBN:
  Don't let them sabotage a possible good thing by blowing up your phone while you're in the middle of a hot date with nonsense like, “Jason keeps asking for a Popsicle before bed. Do you think it's okay that I give him one?”
(transitive, dated) To excite.
- 2015, Kacey Musgraves
  They're blowing up our phones, asking where we are / Just say we're almost there; we ain't even in the car
More civilians than soldiers have been blown up by anti-personnel mines.

See if you can blow the bubbles up the staircase.
(transitive, dated) To scold violently.
- 2011, Jaime Reed, Living Violet, →ISBN, page 67:
  Dad sure knew how to kill a mood. He had blown up my phone all day, ensuring that I didn't back out of our agreement.
to blow someone up with flattery

to blow up a contention
(sports) To blow the whistle.
Dad blew up at me when I told him I was pregnant.
(cycling) To succumb to oxygen debt and lose the ability to maintain pace in a race.
- 1992, Ice Cube (lyrics and music), “It Was A Good Day”, in The Predator:
  Halfway home, and my pager's still blowin' up
(slang, transitive) To bombard with a large number of calls, texts, etc., often exasperating the recipient.
- 1807, The Port Folio (page 313)
  […] did not choose to comply with her wishes. Upon which Mrs. Basset, in the language of the Old Bailey, nabbed the rust; insisted upon some liquor, would not quit the house without it, and began to blow up the hostess and blast the rose.
- 1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter 13, in Middlemarch […], volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book II:
  I have blown him up well — nobody can say I wink at what he does.
(slang, intransitive) Receiving a large number of calls or notifications to the point of making the device effectively unusable.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
  Him there they found, squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve assaying by his devilish art to reach the organs of her fancy, and with them forge illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams; or if, inspiring venom, he might taint the animal spirits, that from pure blood arise, like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise at least distempered, discontented thoughts, vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, blown up with high conceits engendering pride.
(slang, colloquial) To cause a malodorous smell by flatulation or defecation.
For the school science project, each student will blow up a balloon and then tie it closed.

bring up edit

kill / slay edit

kill / slay. No scrambling needed here ... I'd say that the sentences are funny enough the way they're written, because all of the definitions except the literal use are just expressive metaphors of the literal use.

Our team has been trailing in the standings all season, but last night we absolutely killed the visiting team.

get off edit

I want to do this one properly with all 24 senses out of place and not just the most obvious ones, but it will take more work than the others up above.

Verb edit

scrambled (third-person singular simple present gets off, present participle getting off, simple past got off, past participle (UK) got off or (US) gotten off)

(transitive, intransitive) To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it.
(transitive) To move (something) from being on top of (something else) to not being on top of it.
(intransitive) To stop touching or physically interfering with something or someone.
(transitive) To cause (something) to stop touching or interfering with (something else).
(transitive) To stop using a piece of equipment, such as a telephone or computer.
(transitive, intransitive) To disembark, especially from mass transportation such as a bus or train; to depart from (a path, highway, etc).
(transitive) To make or help someone be ready to leave a place (especially to go to another place).
(possibly dated) To leave (somewhere) and start (a trip).
(transitive, intransitive) To leave one's job, or leave school, as scheduled or with permission.
(transitive) To reserve or have a period of time as a vacation from work.
(transitive) To acquire (something) from (someone).
(intransitive) To escape serious or severe consequences; to receive only mild or no punishment (or injuries, etc) for something one has done or been accused of.
(transitive) To help someone to escape serious or severe consequences and receive only mild or no punishment.
(transitive) To (write and) send (something); to discharge.
(transitive, dated) To utter.
(transitive, UK) To make (someone) fall asleep.
(intransitive, UK) To fall asleep.
(transitive, slang) To excite or arouse, especially in a sexual manner, as to cause to experience orgasm.
(intransitive, slang) To experience great pleasure, especially sexual pleasure; in particular, to experience an orgasm.
(intransitive, slang, UK) To kiss; to smooch.
(intransitive, slang) To get high (on a drug).
(transitive, especially in an interrogative sentence) To find enjoyment (in behaving in a presumptuous, rude, or intrusive manner).
(intransitive) Indicates annoyance or dismissiveness.
(dated) To achieve (a goal); to successfully perform.

Get your butt off your chair and help me.

Could you please get the book off the top shelf for me?

Get off your chair and help me.

Get off! You're crushing me!

Don't tickle me – get off!

If I can get off early tomorrow, I'll give you a ride home.

Can you get off the phone, please? I need to use it urgently.

She managed to get a week off in March to go to Paris.

The vandal got off easy, with only a fine.

You got off lightly by not being kept in detention for breaking that window.

She could've faced jail time, but her talented lawyer got her off with only a fine.

She intended to get a letter off to her sister first thing that morning.

to get off a joke

He couldn't get the infant off until nearly two in the morning.

If I wake up during the night, I cannot get off again.

It takes more than a picture in a girlie magazine for me to get off.

You get off the train at the third stop.

Let's get off the interstate at exit 70. No, let's get off at the very next exit.

When we reach the next stop, we'll get off.

The heavens opened just as I got off the bus.

Where do you get off talking to me like that?

I'd like to get off with him after the party.

- 1991, Lydia Lee, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Silhouette, →ISBN:
  "And I'm going! Period." Puckering her lips, she made an ear-splitting whistle, clapped her hands and shouted, "Pluto! Max treat!" […] Max felt something tug on his pant leg. It was Pluto. "Jane! Get your dog off me!"
- 2010, Peter Lovenheim, In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time, Penguin, →ISBN:
  "I get up and get the kids off. I do everything normal mothers do. I just do it in less time."
- 1999, Adam Herz, American Pie (motion picture), spoken by Michelle (Alyson Hannigan):
  What? You don't think I know how to get myself off? Hell, that's what half of band camp is. Sex Ed.
- 2011, Kirsten Kaschock, Sleight: A Novel, Coffee House Press, →ISBN:
  It was Need. Her Need took her half in sleep onto her pillow and with her own hand got her off.
- 2015, Cara McKenna, Crosstown Crush: A Sins In the City Novel, Penguin, →ISBN:
  Her husband's tongue was fast and ingenious, mastered at teasing her clit with rapid, fluttering flicks, and he knew how much pressure she liked from years of getting her off.
- 1975, Mary Sanches, Ben G. Blount, Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use (page 47)
  For example, one addict would crack shorts (break and enter cars) and usually obtain just enough stolen goods to buy stuff and get off just before getting sick.
- 1942-1963, J. F. Powers, quoted in 2013, Katherine A. Powers, Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963, Macmillan (→ISBN), page 155:
  I heard Nelson Algren on the Chez Show, a radio program emanating from the Sapphire Bar of the Chez Paree—you see I've sunk to the lower depths—and he got off a line about Hollywood being a con man's paradise, which wasn't a very ...
- 1991, Newsweek:
  When Quayle looked silly by saying he would be a "pit bull" in the 1992 campaign, David Letterman got off a line about it ("For Halloween, he's going to be a Ninja Turtle"), but the general reaction was curiously tame.
- 2009, Rob Lacey, word on the street, eBook, Zondervan, →ISBN:
  Out of spite, Pharaoh cuts straw supplies and Jewish labourers have to make bricks without straw, the same target rates of productivity as before, but with no straw – virtually impossible. Pharaoh gets off on their exhaustion:
- 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:
  "If they get off their stunt I don't suppose they care a tinker's curse what is truth or what is not."
- 1980 March, Rick Gore, “Journey to China's Far West”, in National Geographic Magazine‎^[2], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 310, column 1:
  WE GET OFF the train in the town of Zhongwei in the largely Muslim Ningxia autonomous region.
- 2001, Ken Follett, Jackdaws, Dutton, →ISBN, page 140:
  "And you're the only person in the country who can do it."
  
  "Get off," she said skeptically.
- 1981, Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire, “A Million Laughs, A Bright Hope”, translating Wisława Szymborska, “Sto Pociech” in Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems by Wisława Szymborska:
  in a word: he’s almost nobody,
  but his head’s filled with freedom, omniscience, transcendence
  beyond his foolish flesh,
  just where does he get off!
- 1985, Joanne Baum, One step over the line: a no-nonsense guide to recognizing and treating cocaine dependency, Harpercollins, →ISBN:
  Each person has a more outrageous story than the previous teller. […] "The first time I got off on cocaine, man, it was just too fine."
- 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 216:
  "But I find you have been there after all," said the man, "and now you shall lose your life." The lad cried and begged for himself till he got off with his life; but he got a good thrashing.
- 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:
  He was allowed to rise with a warning that if he played any tricks he would not get off so lightly the second time.
- 1962, Henry Lawson, Prose Works:
  Then he was charged with killing some sheep and a steer on the run, and converting them to his own use, but got off mainly because there was a difference of opinion between the squatter and the other local J.P. concerning politics ...
- 2000, Morris Philipson, A Man in Charge: A Novel, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 174:
  My parents were killed, but I got off with only a broken arm and a broken leg.
- 1989, Cardwell C. Nuckols, Cocaine: From Dependency to Recovery, →ISBN, page 2:
  Fear is biochemically similar to someone "getting off" on cocaine.
- 1970, Milton Travers, Each Other's Victims (page 43)
  The beginner's dose may be anywhere from 100 to 250 mikes — micrograms, or millionths of a gram. Most hardened heads need 600 to 800 mikes, and some as many as 1,400 mikes, before they experience any sensation of getting off.
- 2001, Jonathan Harvey, Out In The Open, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, →ISBN:
  Well I'll have to get a form off Rosemary Boyle to get money out your bank.
- 2017, Barbara Robey Egloff Shackett, Stranded in Montana; Dumped in Arizona, Dorrance Publishing (→ISBN), page 202:
  They said if they sent a form to me it would take about ten days, but if I could get a form off the Internet, I would greatly speed up the process.
- 2019, Christopher Beanland, The Wall in the Head, Unbound Publishing, →ISBN:
  I'll get her to come and get a script off you in, say, a fortnight? And then I want you on all the shoots with me and Kate and that gothic tosspot who's presenting. You never know when it might need a rewrite, or he might need a kick up the arse, ...
- 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:
  "I think we should get off, Enid. It is nearly seven," said he.
- 2016, D. G. Compton, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, New York Review of Books, →ISBN, page 155:
  “I've been out for a walk around. The rain's blown over. We'll be able to get off right after breakfast.”
- 2017, Jane Gardam, Faith Fox, Europa Editions, →ISBN:
  'I'm beginning to feel like London again. I wish we could get off right after breakfast.'

User:Soap/scrambled

Contents

throw up edit

Verb edit

blow up edit

Verb edit

bring up edit

kill / slay edit

get off edit

Verb edit