tie up | Idiomator

Meaning: Tosecurewithrope,string,etc.Don't forget totie upyour hair before you bake.The robberstied upthe bank employees before forcing a way into the vault.1918,W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIX, inThe Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.:The Bobbs-Merrill Company,→OCLC:At the far end of the houses the head gardener stood waiting for his mistress, and he gave her strips of bass totie upher nosegay. This she did slowly and laboriously, with knuckly old fingers that shook.; (idiomatic)Tooccupy,detain, keepbusy,ordelay.He has beentying upthe phone lines for hours now.1964June 16, “Surprise Strike Stops Traffic On 6 Railroads”, inThe Indianapolis Star, volume62, number11, Indianapolis, Ind., page 3:Just how much traffic wastied upwas not immediately determined but in Houston about 150 cars of grain arrived yesterday and could not be transferred to the port because of the Port Terminal Railroad picketing.; (idiomatic)Tocomplete,finish,orresolve.I'd like totie upthe project before I leave.; (finance)Toimmobilizeacapital: make a capital investment that makes that capital unavailable.Don'ttie upyour capital in aging accounts.

Examples:

EN: Now, look here, isopod... I want you to tie up your story with the serial you're starting,
ES: Escucha, Isopod, quiero que juntes tu historia con el serial que empezamos.
EN: He's tagging around on her coat-tails hoping someday he'll tie up with her.
ES: Siempre está rondándola. - Eso es lo que le interesa.
EN: Yes, bring water and something to tie up.
ES: Sí, tráigale un poco de agua y algo para vendarlo.
EN: They would tie up here, just when the fish are beginning to bite.
ES: Justo cuando empezaban a picar.
EN: so that I can tie up the boxes.
ES: Es para atar todas las cajas.
EN: No, no. That's too much money to tie up in a proposition like this.
ES: No, es demasiado dinero para este tipo de proposición.
EN: Front page. It isn't every day that a concertina player gets to tie up with a princess.
ES: No todos los días... un ejecutante de concertina se enreda con una princesa.
EN: And now, folks, as soon as we tie up, I'm going to bring the entire troupe ashore, and we'll give you our monster parade!
ES: ¡Y ahora, amigos, tan pronto amarremos, llevaré a la compañía entera a tierra... y les haremos un desfile descomunal!
EN: How can I tie up your wound if you don't stay still? - It's all right, I'll keep still.
ES: ¿Cómo voy a vendarle si no se queda quieto?
EN: The police... All they know is to blow a whistle and tie up traffic.
ES: La policía no sirve para nada.
EN: Well, tie up your animals and--and come in and sit.
ES: Aten a los animales y entren después.
EN: Didn't take you long to tie up with him.
ES: No tardó mucho en asociarse con él.
EN: Say you won't tie up with Fuseli.
ES: ¡Dime que no te unirás a Fuseli!
EN: Prissy, come tie up this cow!
ES: Ata la vaca.
EN: Those broken-down opposition papers, who won't play ball with us I want you to tie up for 24 hours.
ES: Esos periódicos de la oposición que no quieren cooperar quiero que los tengas a raya 24 horas.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).