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What is "set-up"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
set-up
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
new
▪ We need to have clarification of the role Helen Hoy would be expected to play in the new set-up.
▪ But how to get that new set-up looking right?
▪ Manypeople also believed the new set-up could not work.
▪ Caulerpa is not very hardy, and sensitive to changes in the chemical and biological activity of a new set-up.
▪ He says the new set-up will benefit patients by cutting administration costs and freeing more money for health care.
▪ Howard is still a little jealous of his authority, hasn't yet quite grasped the new set-up since my Ministry was established.
▪ The new set-up gives more surface area, says Mr Tomlinson, and should last much longer.
▪ What's the name of your new set-up?
present
▪ A little history will explain the present set-up.
▪ How large will my Snakehead grow in the present set-up, and what is its life expectancy?
whole
▪ That, she knew full well, she could do nothing about, although she disapproved of the whole set-up.
▪ The whole set-up is not quite as simple as it may seem.
▪ This was entirely necessary, considering that the whole set-up, complete with rocks and water, weighs about two tonnes.
▪ There was something fishy about the whole set-up.
▪ The idea of this joint venture is to reduce overheads and the whole set-up is run by a staff of just seven.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ An efficient accounts set-up can not only save a company money: it can improve its relationship with its clients.
▪ It's an impressive set-up. The foundation brings in half a million dollars a day.
▪ My last school was quite traditional, but it's a different set-up at the new one.
▪ They're divorced, but they're still living in the same house - it seems like a strange set-up to me.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ It was still a strange set-up at Four Winds.
▪ Oh, sometimes I wish I'd never come into this set-up.
▪ Once the system has popped, it is more self-sustaining, self-stabilizing, not requiring the artificial crutches that set-up needed.
▪ The basic lighting set-up incorporates three lamps.
▪ The kind of firing set-up used is obviously important in determining the firing atmosphere achieved.
▪ This is a two-machine set-up by which original video recordings can be transferred on to copy tapes.
▪ This is particularly true of the set-up operation.
▪ This was entirely necessary, considering that the whole set-up, complete with rocks and water, weighs about two tonnes.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
set-up

"arrangement," 1890, from verbal phrase set up, attested from c.1200 as "to make ready for use" and from 1950 (in pugilism) as "to bring (someone) to a vulnerable position;" from set (v.) + up (adv.). The verbal phrase also can mean "to establish" (early 15c.) and "put drinks before customers" (1880).

Wiktionary
set-up

n. (alternative form of setup English)

Usage examples of "set-up".

Martian coleopteroids this scene presented itself in a very different fashion, since they depended on perception rather than any elaborate sensory set-up.

Mario any reason to think I found anything dodgy about the set-up here.

That was what made the San Roble set-up such a cinch for a smart band of crooks.

It reminded me of those set-ups railway modelling societies use to create atmosphere for their titchy displays.

Setting up your car for the street is different from a slalom, autocross, rally or modified production racing set-up.

One thing Ranse knew beyond question was that Shipp was straight, so this was no set-up.

The President and Congress, however, were rapidly preparing for sea, and he watched every move: he saw their rigging new set-up, noted the seamanlike way in which the President re-rove her bowsprit gammoning in a single afternoon, saw their stores come aboard, hundreds and hundreds of casks, saw them complete their water, exercise their hands aloft, take in their powder from the hoy.

Curtis was marshaling her forces for a mighty effort when the door opened, and Steingall entered, accompanied by a tall, well set-up man in evening dress, and wearing an open overcoat and green Homburg hat.

Three camera set-ups, top-of-the-range sound equipment, volve -- three-quarters of a million at least.

Where the Empire gains over the usual bloodline set-up is they use the game to recruit the cleverest, most ruthless and manipulative apices from the whole population to run the show, rather than have to marry new blood into some stagnant aristocracy and hope for the best when the genes shake out.

The tables, the dinnerware, our equipment, the set-up, the food, the cops.

Ditto for the Magnitogorsk set-up, which had a line on shipments by rail destined for the Perchorsk Projekt.

The Bay Steamship Company, a hastily, set-up subsidiary, chartered 286 merchant ships totalling 1.

Sure, DocWagon mouthpieces were screaming that the whole thing was a set-up, that Crashcart was hiring street thugs to shoot the drek out of DocWagon vehicles and then pull a quick fade when the Crashcart buggies arrived.

Something you seem to forget with monotonous regularity, but then, that's my fault, I've allowed that, colluded if you like in the whole unequal set-up that is our appalling, empty marriage.