warm up

Formswarms up, warming up, warmed up

1. 1
   phrasal verbtransitive

   To heat or reheat something, such as food.

   I'll warm up the rest of the soup for lunch.

   She warmed up a mug of cider and curled up with a book.

   Similarheat, reheat

   Oppositecool, chill

   Note

   With an object, the phrasal verb can wrap around it or not: warm up the soup and warm the soup up are both fine. A pronoun has to go in the middle, so people say warm it up, never warm up it. The same rule holds wherever the phrase takes an object, from a car engine to a crowd.

2. 2
   phrasal verbfigurativelyintransitive

   To prepare the body for strenuous exercise with light activity such as stretching.

   Always warm up for ten minutes before you lift heavy weights.

   The runners warmed up with a slow jog around the track.

3. 3
   noun · warm-upcountable

   The act of exercising or stretching to get the body ready for strenuous activity.

   A proper warm-up lowers the risk of pulling a muscle.

   The coach made us repeat our warm-ups because we had rushed through them.

   Note

   The noun is written warm-up, with a hyphen, while the verb stays two words: you warm up before a run, and the stretching you do is your warm-up. It is countable, and the plural often means a set routine of exercises, as in doing your warm-ups properly to avoid injury.

4. 4
   phrasal verbintransitive

   To become warmer.

   The weather should warm up by the weekend.

   Once the furnace kicked on, the old farmhouse slowly warmed up.

   Oppositecool

5. 5
   phrasal verbtransitive or intransitive

   To reach, or bring something to, its normal operating temperature, as with a car engine.

   On icy mornings he lets the engine warm up for a few minutes before driving off.

   She warmed up the car while the kids finished their breakfast.

6. 6
   phrasal verbfigurativelyintransitive

   To grow to like or approve of someone or something more and more; used with to.

   It took the old cat a week to warm up to the new puppy.

   Voters were skeptical at first, but they gradually warmed up to her plan.

   Similarwarm

   Note

   Liking that grows by degrees always takes to before its object: you warm up to a new colleague, a plan or an idea, usually after some early doubt. Plain warm to means the same thing, and either can be used; the up adds a feeling of gradual change rather than any new meaning.

7. 7
   phrasal verbfigurativelyintransitive

   To get oneself ready for an activity by rehearsing or running through a routine beforehand.

   Chess players often warm up with a few quick games before a tournament.

   The orchestra was warming up as the audience found their seats.

   Similarprepare, practice

8. 8
   noun · warm-upcountable

   Something done to get ready for a performance.

   Before the recital, her only warm-up was a few slow scales on the piano.

   The cast's backstage warm-ups included tongue twisters and a lot of pacing.

   Similarpreparation

9. 9
   phrasal verbfigurativelytransitive

   To make an audience lively and enthusiastic before a show.

   A local comedian warmed up the crowd before the headliner came on.

   The host's job is to warm up the studio audience before taping begins.

   Similarrouse, energize, enliven

10. 10
    noun · warm-upuncountable

    A period of time set aside for warm-ups before an event.

    Fans filed in during warm-up, watching the players stretch along the sideline.

    The pitcher threw only a handful of pitches in warm-up before the umpire called time.

    Note

    Used for the scheduled period, the word often drops its article, the way halftime does: players stretch during warm-up, and a pitcher throws a few pitches in warm-up. That is the quickest way to tell it from the exercises themselves, which you do as a warm-up or as your warm-ups.

11. 11
    phrasal verbtransitive

    In computing, to fill a cache with data ahead of time; to prepopulate it.

    Remember to warm up the cache before you send live traffic to the new servers.

    The deploy script warmed up the database cache, so the first visitors never saw a slow page.

    Similarwarm

    Note

    Engineers speak of caches as cold or warm. A cold cache is empty, so the first requests after a restart all miss it and fall through to slower storage; warming it up, often by replaying common requests or loading popular data in advance, spares real users that slow start. Plain warm works the same way, as in warm the cache.

12. 12
    phrasal verbtransitive

    To send email from a domain in order to improve its sending reputation.

    If you don't warm up a new domain, inbox providers may flag your first campaign as spam.

    Before the launch, the marketing team spent a month warming up the new domain.

    Similarwarm

    Note

    Mailbox providers judge a sender partly by its track record, so a brand-new domain that suddenly sends thousands of messages looks like a spammer. Warming it up means starting with small volumes, ideally to people likely to open and reply, and raising them over several weeks. Email marketers say warm a domain as well as warm it up.

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