level up

To level up is to get better. In games, it means earning enough experience points to reach the next level; in everyday speech, it means improving your skills, your life or your situation.

In games

Most role-playing games give you experience points (XP) for fighting, exploring and finishing quests. Collect enough and you level up: your character gets more health, new abilities or better stats. Repeating the same task over and over just to earn XP is called grinding.

In everyday life

Outside games, “level up” means any step forward. You can level up your cooking, your wardrobe, your career or your apartment. Merriam-Webster defines it as advancing or improving “in or as if in a game,” and its example sentences come from fashion, food and business writing as much as gaming.

Examples

• “Finally hit level 50. Took me all weekend.”
• “New job, new city. Major level up.”
• “She leveled up her coffee game with a proper grinder.”

Where it came from

Levels and experience points come from Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson built them into the game, and most early role-playing video games copied the system, bringing “level up” along. Merriam-Webster’s entry for the phrase, which covers both senses, gives a first known use of 2003.

Not to be confused with “levelling up” in UK politics

In Britain, “levelling up” was also the name of Boris Johnson’s flagship policy to reduce inequality between regions, first set out in the Conservatives’ 2019 election manifesto. That’s a different idea: raising poorer areas up, not a person improving themselves.

Related terms

• git gud: stop complaining and improve
• side quest: an optional detour
• main quest: the thing you’re actually supposed to be doing
• grindset: a nonstop self-improvement mindset
• cracked: extremely skilled

See more terms like this in our gaming slang dictionary.