give up phrasal verb ( see also ↑ give )
1 . give something ↔ up to stop doing something, especially something that you do regularly:
Darren has decided to give up football at the end of this season.
She gave up her job and started writing poetry.
give up doing something
I gave up going to the theatre when I moved out of London.
Why don’t you give up smoking?
2 . to stop trying to do something:
We spent half an hour looking for the keys, but eventually gave up and went home.
I give up. What’s the answer?
You shouldn’t give up so easily.
give up doing something
I gave up trying to persuade him to continue with his studies.
give something ↔ up
She has still not given up the search.
The ground was too hard to dig so I gave it up as a bad job (=stopped trying because success seemed unlikely) .
3 . give yourself/somebody up to allow yourself or someone else to be caught by the police or enemy soldiers:
The siege ended peacefully after the gunman gave himself up.
give yourself/somebody up to
In the end, his family gave him up to the police.
4 . give up something to use some of your time to do a particular thing:
I don’t mind giving up a couple of hours a week to deal with correspondence.
5 . give something/somebody ↔ up to give something that is yours to someone else:
The family refused to give up any of their land.
She was put under tremendous pressure to give the baby up.
give something/somebody ↔ up to
I would always give my seat up to an elderly person on the bus.
6 . give somebody ↔ up to end a romantic relationship with someone, even though you do not really want to:
I knew deep down that I should give him up.
7 . give somebody up for dead/lost etc to believe that someone is dead and stop looking for them:
The ship sank and the crew were given up for dead.
8 . give it up for somebody spoken informal used to ask people to ↑ applaud someone
⇨ give up the ghost at ↑ ghost 1 (5)