Through the roof is an idiomatic expression that literally means “through the roof”, but which in practice means something else – or rather other things, because the expression has two very different meanings.
Let’s look first at the least used meaning (just to confuse things): here, through the roof means “full” or “furious”. To say that someone “got mad”, you can use either the verb to go or, less commonly, to hit . In the latter case, you leave out the preposition through :
They hit the roof (“they hit the roof” = “they were furious”).
They went through the roof (“they went through the roof/roof” = “they were furious”).
The second sense, which is widely used in news, means “shoot” – not in the sense of “shooting” a gun, but in the sense of a price that “fired”, for example. That is, to say that something was through the roof means that the thing has increased a lot in value/price/intensity, etc.
Let’s look at some examples of the two meanings, which as always you can use to annotate in Anki and review later.
1 – Go through the roof / hit the roof : “get mad”, “lose your head”, “get mad”, etc.
When they realized he’d lied to them, their parents went through the roof .
When they realized I had lied to them, my parents were pissed off .
When I was expelled from school, my parents went through the roof .
When I was kicked out of school, my parents were furious .
Put that back before Dad sees you and hits the roof !
Put that back on before Dad sees you and loses his mind !
Sergeant Long will hit the roof when I tell him you’ve gone off.
Sergeant Long is going to lose his mind when I tell him you’re gone.
I admitted what I had done and found myself in terrible trouble. He went through the roof !
I admitted what I had done and got terribly in trouble. He was pissed !
2 – “Shoot”.
Prices have gone through the roof .
Prices soared .
Sales of their new CD have gone through the roof .
Sales of their new CD soared .
Share prices have gone through the roof in the past six months.
Share prices have soared over the past six months.
No wonder inflation is going through the roof and our environment ends up choked with litter.
No wonder inflation is soaring and our environment is choking with garbage.
Following news of increased profits, the company’s share price went through the roof .
After the news of the increase in profits, the company’s share price soared .
Sales of those products went through the roof .
Sales of these products soared .
They predict business will go through the roof .
They are predicting that business will soar .
Prices for Korean art have gone through the roof .
Korean art prices soared .
House prices were going through the roof .
Home prices soared .