work up

work up (third-person singular simple present works up, present participle working up, simple past and past participle worked up)

1. To raise; to excite; to stir up.

   He worked up the public's passions to rage.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter V, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     In the eyes of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke the apotheosis of the Celebrity was complete. The people of Asquith were not only willing to attend the house-warming, but had been worked up to the pitch of eagerness.

2. To develop.

   I shall have worked up an appetite with all this heavy work.

   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 185:

     "See how it's working up; we shall have thunder and lightning."

3. (transitive, medicine) To give (a patient) a general medical examination to assess health and fitness.
4. (obsolete, transitive) To use up (material, etc.).
5. (obsolete, nautical) To set at an irksome or needless task.