What it means
Tooled up means someone’s carrying a weapon, or they’ve turned up fully equipped for whatever’s about to go down. In police, crime, or street chat, it usually leans hard toward being armed. In normal everyday talk, it can just mean you’ve got all your gear ready. Context is the whole engine here, so don’t sleepwalk past it.
Usage examples
"You lot tooled up for the DIY weekend, yeah? I’ve got the drill, bits and a brew. Don’t make me do it with a spoon."
"The police warned he might be tooled up, so they sent backup."
"We turned up tooled up for the job, ladders, drills, the lot."
"Don’t act shocked, mate. He rolled in tooled up and looking for drama from the jump."
"We came tooled up for the festival, ponchos, snacks, chargers, the whole survival bundle."
Where it comes from
This comes from tool meaning equipment, a word that’s been around in English for centuries. In British criminal and police slang, tools also came to mean weapons, so tooled up grew into a way of saying armed. Outside that world, it kept the wider sense of being fully kitted out and ready.
