(See also EXACERBATION.)

beef up To strengthen, reinforce; to augment, increase. Prior to slaughter, cows, steer, and bulls raised for their meat are fattened in order to increase their body weight and thus the profits derived from their sale. An early figurative usage appeared in 1941 in A. O. Pollard’s Bombers over Reich:

blow the coals To increase, augment, or heighten; to exacerbate or aggravate. Like fan the fires or add fuel to the fire, the meaning and origin of this phrase are obvious, referring to the action of bellows on coals.

fatten the kitty To increase the stakes, usually in reference to gambling; to add money or chips to a common pot to be awarded to the winner. In many forms of gambling, particularly in card games such as poker, all the players bet by putting money into a pot or pool called a kitty.”To fatten the kitty” is to add more to it, to increase its size. According to several sources, however, kitty can also refer to a percentage of the pot set aside for some special purpose such as buying refreshments or paying the house share. Similar expressions include sweeten the kitty, and fatten or sweeten the pot.

gear up To accelerate or speed up; to increase or boost. Figurative use of gear up derives from the literal mechanical meaning ‘to go into a higher gear so that the driven part goes faster than the driving part’—in other words, to shift into a higher gear in order to go faster. This expression is frequently heard in economic contexts, as in “to gear up production.”

up the ante To raise the stakes, to increase the risk. In poker the ante is the sum that each player pays into the pot in advance; by extension, in other monetary contexts it refers to the share invested in a business venture. The variant raise the ante is usually limited to these more literal uses. Up the ante, however, frequently appears in a nonfinancial sense, with respect to the increased personal or emotional cost entailed by a given decision, relationship, or course of action.