Re: OT: Composing (jara: My girlfriend is a conlanger!)

Isaac Penzev wrote:
> Katav Andreas Johansson:
>
>
>>>Aha. The most cruel thing was "10 years without right for
>>>correspondence"
>>>which meant shooting up.
>>
>>Is "shooting up" idiomatic for "being executed"?
>
>
> It must be. At least according to my dictionary: "The Oxford Russian-English
> Dictionary", by Marcus Wheeler. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972.
At least in American colloquial usage, "to shoot up" has a couple of
meanings. If used transitively, it means to discharge firearms at
something repeatedly ("They shot up the bank during their robbery
attempt."), and is usually only used with inanimate direct objects
(buildings and cars get shot up, people simply get shot). If used
intransitively, it means to inject onesself with hard drugs, usually
heroin ("He shot up in the back seat").