call up
To phone someone, or to make someone join the army, or to get information from a computer.
Meanings
To telephone someone.
"I'll call you up when I arrive at the airport."
"I'm gonna call you up and tell you what to do."
— Chuck Berry, 'Memphis, Tennessee', 1959
To officially order someone to join the armed forces or report for military duty.
"Thousands of young men were called up at the start of the war."
"He was called up to serve in the Second World War at the age of eighteen."
— Commonly reported in British WWII personal accounts; paraphrase of a widely documented historical fact.
To retrieve or display information from a computer system or database.
"The technician called up the patient's records on her screen."
To evoke or bring a memory, feeling, or image to mind.
"That old song calls up memories of my childhood summers."
The telephone sense is common in American English; British English often prefers 'ring up'. The military sense ('called up for service') is well established in British and Commonwealth English. The computing sense ('call up a file') is used broadly.
Commonly used with
Forms
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