Bump it up

As you know from my stories, I got the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine two weeks ago. My appointment at the pharmacy was on Sunday at 12:45pm, but I was able to get it in the morning. They bumped it up. 

Like some phrasal verbs it couldn’t be different, having different meanings, depending on the context. According to Cambridge Dictionary, “bump sth up” means to increase the amount or size of something. 

As an English learner it doesn’t make sense when I have read my friend’s message. Then I started to look up the meaning and I found different contexts where we can use the same slang.

• Bump up a meeting/appointment. You change an appointment to be earlier than scheduled. 
• Bump up an email. You resend an email, then it is going to move to the top of unread emails. 
• Bump a post on the internet. It means to write comments on the post to make it more relevant.
• Bump up my job career. You promote someone at work.

This phrasal verb showed me that sometimes the word’s application doesn’t follow exactly the dictionary’s definition. Interpretation makes the difference. 

This is the moment when I say: I love learning English!