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.