From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishbeat up phrasal verb1 beat somebody ↔ upHIT to hurt someone badly by hitting them Her boyfriend got drunk and beat her up.2 beat up on somebody American EnglishHIT to hit someone and harm them, especially someone younger or weaker than yourself3 BLAME beat yourself up (also beat up on yourself American English) informal to blame yourself too much for something If you do your best and you lose, you can’t beat yourself up about it. → beat→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
beat up• He would come home drunk, get into a fight with Mom, and beat her up.• Carl got beaten up outside a nightclub on Saturday night.beat up on somebody• They just love beating up on architects.• Everybody beat up on him because he made the team.• She's never going to get anywhere if she tries to beat up on males, especially a catch like me.• I used to beat up on my brothers when we were kids.• There was no need to take the time to beat up on the new pioneers.beat-upˈbeat-up adjective OLD/NOT NEWa beat-up car, bicycle etc is old and in bad condition SYN battered a beat-up old Ford EscortExamples from the Corpus
beat-up• I woke up after that first night in the bunk, and the first thing I saw was a beat-up car outside.• He went to the window and watched the cars, beat-up minis and dusty sedans, entering and leaving the compound.• a beat-up old Chevy• The person I had seen could have not the slightest interest in a beat-up old poet like me.• She had large eyes, but mostly, it seemed, for his beat-up shoes.• The desert town of Perfection, Nevada - all tumbleweed and beat-up trucks - gets attacked by giant earthworms.• The piano that we had inspected and paid for in the city was delivered by three young Arabs in a beat-up van. 