fill-up, n.
[f. verbal phr. to fill up: see fill v. For the stress see break-down.]
That which serves to fill up a hollow or stop a gap.
| 1853 E. Twisleton Let. 6 Feb. (1928) iv. 69 The three first [men] are cousins..and the latter is a fill-up [at a dinner-table]. 1872 Daily News 2 Sept., They are falling by spadefuls into the cart, and have now to do service..as a fill-up for some pestilential ditch. 1883 Pall Mall G. 12 Sept. 4/2 The incident of the ‘Sempiternal Club’..looks..a little like a ‘fill-up’. 1899 Sketch 1 Nov. 48/1 For years the flower would figure in the ‘fill-up par.’. 1908 Chambers's Jrnl. Oct. 767/1 Compressing them [sc. exhibits in a museum] within the allotted space in accordance with what may be..described as a ‘fill-up’ policy. 1941 B.B.C. Gloss. Broadc. Terms 12 Fill-up, stop-gap material broadcast in an interval between the end of one programme and the beginning of the next. 1948 Scrutiny XV. 336 The French pianist Monique Haas has made a record of Bach's Italian Concerto with Rameau's Les Cyclopes as fill-up. 1960 John o' London's 7 Apr. 414/4 As the fill-up is a rather laboured..performance of Wolf's delicious Italian Serenade, I cannot recommend this record. 1970 J. Fleming Young Man, I think you're Dying xi. 141 He had breakfast and a fill-up with petrol and oil in a motorway restaurant. |