Today I learned “hang up” does NOT mean what I thought it meant

Today in my English lesson we had this question:

“How do you keep going and not \_\_\_?”

The story was about a man with cancer, and his friend asking why he keeps fighting instead of giving up.

The options were:

A. get through

B. back off

C. break out

D. hang up

I didn’t really know the phrasal verbs, but I assumed the blank had to be something negative.

Then I saw “hang up” and somehow my brain interpreted it as “hang himself.” 💀

So I confidently chose D.

Which basically turned the sentence in my head into:

“Why are you still alive when you’re sick? Just hang yourself already.”

My teacher looked at my answer and immediately started laughing 😭

Meanwhile I was just sitting there slowly realizing what I had done.

I may have accidentally turned an inspirational cancer story into the darkest sentence possible.

Anyway… I guess it’s finally time for me to start studying phrasal verbs 😅