smash up
verb1
Ambitransitive, Idiomatic To destroy, or be destroyed by smashing.
- You remember, Harry, when the working men in America revolted against the Robots and smashed them up, and when the people gave the Robots firearms against the rebels. And then when the governments turned the Robots into soldiers, and there were so many wars.c. 1921 (date written), Karel Čapek, translated by Paul Selver, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots): A Fantastic Melodrama […], Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1923, →OCLC, Act 2:
- The complete 1892 rebuilding, indeed, followed an accident in 1890, when No. 6 ran away down the Buckley branch, and got badly smashed up in a collision at Connah's Quay.1944 May and June, “Notes and News: A Much Transformed Locomotive”, in Railway Magazine, page 186:
2
Idiomatic To injure or maim.
- Derived terms
- smashup