Notch Up in a Sentence: Meaning & Examples

Notch up means to achieve, score or steadily accumulate something, usually a win, a record or a running total; to use notch up in a sentence, put the achievement straight after the verb: “The team notched up its fourth win.” Reporting contexts favour it, and the past form is notched up.

Notch up at a glance

• Notch up is a transitive phrasal verb meaning to achieve, score or accumulate.
• It almost always needs an object: notch up a win, notch up a century.
• The particle stays close, and a pronoun object must sit between verb and up: notch it up.
• Its forms are notches up, notched up and notching up.
• Register is neutral to journalistic, at home in sports and business reporting.
• The commonest error is treating it as separable in the same free way as put on or pick up.

What does notch up mean?

Notch up is a transitive phrasal verb meaning to achieve or score one more result, or to gather results into a growing total. The Cambridge entry for notch up groups the score sense and the accumulate sense, and the object tells them apart.

One limitation is worth stating. Notch up reports a countable achievement, so it is the wrong choice for a feeling, a quality or a fact that is not being tallied. You notch up wins, points, sales and years, but you would not notch up happiness or trust; for those, use build, earn or win. The verb also carries a note of quiet pride, which can sound odd in a formal minute about routine business. A quick test is to ask whether the figure could be written on a scoreboard; if it could, notch up is safe.

How do you use notch up in a sentence?

The verb is transitive and its particle stays close, which makes the pronoun test the clearest rule. A noun object follows up in normal use, but a pronoun object must come between the verb and the particle. The same test applies in every tense, so notched it up and will notch it up both keep the pronoun inside.

Where the accumulation is about time on the clock rather than a result, clock up the miles is the closer phrase, because clock up measures duration and distance, not scores. If no figure is involved at all, the plain verb win or score is usually cleaner than either phrase.

Notch up in a sentence: examples across contexts

Notch up moves between sport, business and personal milestones without changing shape. The ten sentences below keep the same phrasal verb while moving from a match report to a retirement notice.

Notch up vs rack up

Notch up and rack up the points are near neighbours in the accumulate sense, but they part company on tone and on what they count.

Verdict: choose notch up for a single notable result or a tidy tally, and rack up when the point is sheer volume, especially a growing cost or debt.

Word forms and grammar of notch up

Notch up inflects on the base verb and keeps the particle fixed. The table also lists the related phrases learners reach for when they want a similar tally.

The verb has a useful near twin in tally the scores, which stresses the counting itself rather than the achievement. Each phrase counts something different, so match the object to the verb: results for notch up, time and distance for clock up, and rows of figures for tally up.

Common mistakes with notch up

• Incorrect: The team notched up. Correct: The team notched up a win. Rule: Notch up is transitive, so the achievement cannot be left out.
• Incorrect: They notched up it in the final minute. Correct: They notched it up in the final minute. Rule: A pronoun object must sit between the verb and the particle.
• Incorrect: He notched up happiness. Correct: He earned some happiness. Rule: Notch up counts results and totals, not feelings or qualities.
• Incorrect: She has notch up three prizes. Correct: She has notched up three prizes. Rule: After has, use the past participle notched.
• Incorrect: The firm notched up record sales in December since ten years. Correct: The firm has notched up record sales for ten years. Rule: Use for with a duration and the present perfect for a period reaching now.

Practice using notch up

The seven exercises mix gap-filling, error repair, rewriting and register choices. Check the reasoning in the answer list, not only the key.

1. Fill the gap: The young player ______ her first goal for the club.
2. Fill the gap: The charity has ______ up a million pounds.
3. Choose the better word: After years of overspending, the company had (notched up / racked up) huge debts.
4. Correct the error: They notched up it in the last over.
5. Build a sentence: use notch up in the present perfect about a reader reaching fifty books.
6. Rewrite with a pronoun: The goalkeeper notched up another clean sheet. Use it instead of another clean sheet.
7. Spot the register: which belongs in a match report — the captain notched up her third try, or the captain got herself another try?

Answers

1. notched up — a single countable achievement in the past tense.
2. notched — the present perfect needs the past participle notched up.
3. racked up — a growing cost or debt calls for the volume sense of rack up.
4. They notched it up in the last over — a pronoun splits verb and particle.
5. Model answer: She has notched up fifty books this year.
6. The goalkeeper notched it up — the pronoun moves before up.
7. The captain notched up her third try — a report keeps the measured, neutral verb.

The bottom line

Use notch up in a sentence to record one more countable result or a running total, and keep the achievement as the object. Two rules decide most lines: the verb is transitive, so something must be notched up, and a pronoun object must sit between the verb and the particle. Where the point is a growing pile of wins or debts, accumulate a lead or rack up carries the weight better.

Frequently asked questions about notch up

Is notch up one word or two?

It is always two words, and it is not hyphenated. The same is true of rack up, clock up and tally up. Only the base verb can stand alone, as in they notch a marker on the board. Treat notch up as a fixed pair, with up carrying the sense of adding to a total.

Does notch up need an object?

Yes. Notch up is transitive, so it always takes the thing being achieved or counted, such as a win, a goal, points or years. A sentence that stops at the verb, as in the team notched up, is incomplete. If you need an intransitive verb, use win or score bare instead.

Can notch up be split by its object?

Sometimes. A long noun object may follow up or, less often, precede it, so both notched up a trophy and notched a trophy up are possible. A pronoun object is stricter: it must sit between the verb and the particle, as in notched it up. Never place a pronoun after up.

Is notch up used in the passive?

It can be, especially in reports that keep the achievement in focus, as in another record was notched up that night. The passive is less common than the active because readers usually want to know who scored. Prefer the active when the person or team is the interesting part, and the passive when the record itself is.