bang up

Damage, injure, as in Banging up the car a second time will make Dad very unhappy, or Mother fell down the stairs and was all banged up. The verb to bang alone had this meaning from the 1500s on, up being added in the late 1800s. In the early 1800s it gave rise to the colloquial adjective bang-up, for excellent or very successful, as in David did a bang-up job baking the birthday cake.

In addition to the idioms beginning with bang

• bang away
• bang for the buck
• bang into
• bang one’s head against
• bang out
• bang up

also see:

• beat (bang) one’s head against the wall
• get a bang out of
• go over big (with a bang)
• more bang for the buck