put up

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put up (not comparable)

1. Alternative form of put-up

put up (third-person singular simple present puts up, present participle putting up, simple past and past participle put up)

1. (transitive) To place in a high location.

   Please put up your luggage in the overhead bins.

   Three volunteers put up their hands in response to the speaker's request.

2. (transitive) To hang; to mount.

   Many people put up messages on their refrigerators.

3. (transitive) To style (the hair) up on the head, instead of letting it hang down.
4. (transitive, idiomatic, used with "to") To cajole or dare (someone) to do (something).

   I think someone put him up to it.

5. (transitive, idiomatic) To store away.

   Synonym: put away

   Coordinate terms: lock away, lock up

   Be sure to put up the tools when you finish.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book VIII:

     “As for your money,” replied Partridge, “I beg, sir, you will put it up; I will receive none of you at this time; for at present I am, I believe, the richer man of the two. […]

6. (transitive, idiomatic) To house; to shelter; to take in.

   We can put you up for the night.

   1. (reflexive, archaic) To stop at a hotel or a tavern for entertainment.
      • 1946, William Allen White, Autobiography, page 411:

        For a week or ten days we put up in London at a smart, rather exclusive second- or third-class haunt of the decade's nobility and gentry—the Artillery Mansions.

7. (transitive, idiomatic) To present, especially in "put up a fight".

   That last fighter put up quite a fight.

   They didn't put up much resistance.

8. (transitive) To endure; to put up with; to tolerate.
   • 1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], Act I:

     By gogs bloud my maiſters, we will not put vp this ſo quietly, […]
     VVele ſo deale of ourſelues as wele reuenge this villainy.

   • 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy:

     Dionysius of Syracuse, in his exile, was made to stand without dore […] ; he wisely put it up, and laid the fault where it was, on his own pride and scorn, which in his prosperity he had formerly showed others.

9. (transitive) To provide funds in advance.

   Butty Sugrue put up £300,000 for the Ali–Lewis fight.

   • 2007 September 27, Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood, spoken by Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), distributed by Paramount Vantage & Miramax Films:

     This is why I can guarantee to start drilling and to put up the cash to back my word.

10. (transitive) To build a structure.
    • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

      The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, […] .

    • 1970, Joni Mitchell (lyrics and music), “Big Yellow Taxi”, in Ladies of the Canyon, performed by Joni Mitchell:

      They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

11. (transitive) To make available; to offer.

    The picture was put up for auction.

    I put my first child up for adoption.

    • 2001, Donald Spoto, chapter 3, in Marilyn Monroe: The Biography‎ (non-fiction), Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 39:

      The house on Arbol Drive was put up for sale that autumn; this portion of the street soon vanished, and the land became part of the Hollywood Bowl complex.

    • 2023 November 1, “'Western' on the move as diesel-hydraulics change hands”, in RAIL, number 995, page 24:

      Meanwhile, D9513 has been acquired by a member of the Wensleydale Railway, after it was put up for sale by its owners who had the locomotive at the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Railway.

12. (hunting, transitive) To cause (wild game) to break cover.
    • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

      "By George! they'll have something to excite them if they put us up."

13. (transitive, food and drink, idiomatic) To can (food) domestically; to preserve (meat, fruit or vegetables) by sterilizing and storing in a bottle, jar or can.
    • 1983, Audrey Borenstein, Chimes of Change and Hours: Views of Older Women in Twentieth-century America‎ (non-fiction), Associated University Presses, →ISBN, page 187:

      People made their own cottage cheese, picked wild strawberries and canned them, and put up apples.

14. (US, Canada, transitive, sports, idiomatic) To score; to accumulate scoring. Ellipsis of to put up on the scoreboard..
    • 2020 April 24, Ken Belson, Ben Shpigel, “Full Round 1 2020 N.F.L. Picks and Analysis”, in the New York Times‎:

      In addition to putting up nearly 3,300 receiving yards and 32 touchdown receptions in three college seasons, he was also the main punt returner for the Sooners.

    • 2011 August 9, John Kreiser, “The Great One's 23 unbreakable records”, in NHL.com‎:

      The last player to have more than 140 points in one season was Mario Lemieux, who put up 160 in 1995-96.

15. (transitive, printing, historical) To set (matter) in capital letters.
16. Synonym of frame up (“falsely pin a crime on”)

• Verb sense 7 is a set phrase (verb + particle) that always jointly precede a direct object, which usually is an indefinite nominal meaning some type of resistance (e.g. a fight, a stoic defence, the strongest denunciation). Verb sense 4 is also very idiomatic, always taking a direct object before the particle as well as the preposition "to" + indirect object after it (put someone up to something). Most of the verb senses are not so restricted—their direct object can appear before or after the particle (unless that object is a definite pronoun, which as a rule comes before the particle). The last transitive senses 12–15 are specific to particular fields, historical periods, etc.

• put up or shut up
• put up with