h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"ramps up", "ramp up", "ramped up", "ramping up"

I belive it is a bad version of "amped up", which had a discoteque origin, meaning both that the noise level had increased and that the dancers would be driven by the music to act as if they were on amphetamines...

So, the original version would have indicated a spike in activity, while this odd meally-mouthed progression means a gradual escalation, although to the brain-dead user of such parlance, it really doesn't mean anything so subtle, just seems to fit the sentence.
Of course, neither version are really needed in articles on something besides pop music, such as those merely indicating an "increase" in something, like material production at a factory, oil at refinery, or the usage of such useless words in modern "journalism". It's bad enough in the Washington Post and Parade, but when it crawls into "Time" and "The Independant", ick!
I would say that the word or phrase has become jejune enough that it's original coiners don't want it anymore.

*sits quietly and reads*

Traveller in Time hearing the Bangs of the Base hammering in his head
"Listens quietly.

I believe the Ridgeways up in Ardmore were about to heave their yacht up the ramp? High tide 30th August until 2nd September.


The hammering may also be the remainder of a flu, by the way"

You might have a point, there.
But taking nouns and contracting the action of abusing the noun with an action verb into an unword is a bad, though common, habit of lazy writers.

"I am going to heave the yacht up the ramp, out of the pond."

"We's gonna ramp up the dinghie outs o'da canals."

Poetry is one thing, but mental bankruptcy is something else.

On the other hand, sloppy folk songs and bad rock songs have enshrined wordage that is so bad it has become the elements of study by uni courses, which I think is funny, considering that some Rap and HipHop wordologists have spent more time with their dictionaries and actually restored a respectibility for odd words (as long as they almost rhyme) among the young and uneducated.

Essay on college newspeak coming up later, after I find the anti-emetics.