Cough up

“Cough up” is a phrasal verb that means “to pay.” This is usually used when the person doing the paying doesn’t want to do it, but they have to do it anyway.

If you play cards, and if you bet at cards, the loser might have to “cough up” at the end of the night. That means, the loser will have to pay money to the winner. And it won’t be much fun.

In today’s story, we said that over 23 countries, plus private individuals, coughed up $143 million to transfer $80 million of oil off the FSO Safer–and they don’t even get to keep the oil!

Donors around the world would have loved to put their money to something other than pumping oil off a decaying tanker. (Feeding people? Solving climate change?) But they had to do it to avert a disaster. So they coughed up the money–and the Houthi rebels might get to enjoy the benefits of the oil.