top-up

top-up (not comparable)

1. That serves as an addition

   English university students will have to pay top-up fees.

top-up (countable and uncountable, plural top-ups)

1. An addition.
   • 2013, BBC News, by Melissa Hogenboom, Applicants wanted for a one-way ticket to Mars

     Energy will be generated from solar panels, water will be recycled and extracted from soil and the astronauts will grow their own food - they will also have an emergency ration and regular top-ups as new explorers join every two years.

2. (insurance) An additional premium paid over the initial premium in order to increase benefit values.
3. Additional credit purchased for a mobile phone.
4. (medicine) A dose of epidural anesthetic added to previously injected spinal anesthetic in combined spinal-epidural anesthesia
   • 1999, The Epidural “Top-Up” in Combined Spinal-Epidural Anesthesia: The Effect of Volume Versus Dose

     The reinforcement of anesthesia by an epidural “top-up” in combined spinal-epidural anesthesia may be explained by a dual mechanism: a volume effect compressing the dural sac and a local anesthetic effect.

5. (education) The situation where a student who holds a qualification equivalent to part of a degree course is then accepted onto a degree course at an intermediate point, without having to start it from the beginning.

• top up (verb)

• pot up, up top