Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

blow up

verb

Forms blows up blowing up blew up blown up

  1. verb Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blow, up. “See if you can blow the bubbles up the staircase.”
  2. verb (intransitive, also figuratively) To explode or be destroyed by explosion. “Why do cars in movies always blow up when they fall off a cliff?”
  3. verb (transitive, also figuratively) To cause (something or someone) to explode, or to destroy (something) or maim or kill (someone) by means of an explosion. “We had to blow up the bridge before the enemy army arrived.”
  4. verb (transitive) To inflate or fill with air, either by literally blowing or by using a pump. “For the school science project, each student will blow up a balloon and then tie it closed.”
  5. verb (transitive, figuratively) To represent something as being more important or serious than it actually is; to inflate; to exaggerate.
  6. verb (transitive) To enlarge or zoom in on. “Blow up the picture to get a better look at their faces.”
  7. verb (intransitive) To fail disastrously.
  8. verb (intransitive, mathematics, said of a function) To increase without bound as a function argument or parameter approaches a certain value; to tend toward infinity; to approach infinity as a limit. “The quantity 1/x blows up as x approaches zero.”

Synonyms

break deadlock knock over kill overload max out take down take out bomb explode detonate set off enlarge magnify flip one's lid throw a fit hit the roof hit the ceiling have kittens have a fit combust blow one's stack fly off the handle flip one's wig lose one's temper blow a fuse go ballistic embroider pad lard

Antonyms

reduce

Etymology

From Middle English blow up, blowe up, dissimilated forms of earlier Middle English upblowen (> English upblow), equivalent to blow + up. Compare West Frisian opblaze (“to blow up, inflate”), Dutch opblazen (“to blow up, inflate”), German aufblähen and aufblasen (“to blow up, inflate”), Swedish blåsa upp (“to blow up, inflate”), Icelandic blása upp (“to blow up, inflate”), Gothic 𐌿𐍆𐌱𐌻𐌴𐍃𐌰𐌽 (ufblēsan, “to blow or puff up”).

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “blow up”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details