Blowing up one’s phone

Blowing up one’s phone is a fairly new idiom. We will examine the meaning of the common idiom blowing up one’s phone, where it came from, and some examples of its idiomatic usage in sentences.

Blowing up one’s phone means calling someone incessantly, texting someone incessantly, sending a lot of messages or calls to someone’s phone. Blowing up one’s phone may be because one person is calling or texting incessantly or it may be because more than one person is calling or texting incessantly. The expression blowing up one’s phone came into use suddenly at the turn of the 21st century, though it’s exact origin is unknown. Related phrases are blow up one’s phone, blows up one’s phone, blew up one’s phone, has blown up one’s phone.

Examples

Two days after the storm, each and every one of you was blowing up my phone wanting to know when we were going back to work,” he said. (L’Observateur)

I’ve already told Jenna I’ll be busy with my new job and won’t have much time for her, but I’m sure she’ll be blowing up my phone wanting to meet up, wanting help with some issue, wanting wanting wanting. (Washington Post)

Oregon is hardly the only school he’s heard from, as schools from a variety of conferences blew up his phone as the floodgates for contact opened up. (Sports Illustrated)