stick up

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

stick up (third-person singular simple present sticks up, present participle sticking up, simple past and past participle stuck up)

1. (transitive) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stick,‎ up. To put or post up by sticking.

   Stick up the postcard with a bit of tape.

2. (transitive, idiomatic) To rob at gunpoint.

   I think they intend to stick up the bank.

   • 2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 27:

     What Pimp was asking me to do was crazy. Off the fuckin' chain. Insane. He was scheming to stick up T.C. and Miss Lady's pool hall so we could pay off G, but a playa like me was getting ready to go to college and put all that two-bit robbing and stealing shit behind me.

3. (intransitive, idiomatic) To be prominent; to point upwards.

   No matter how much I brush it, my hair always sticks up.

4. (intransitive, with for) To speak or act in defence (of).

   Don't let them push you around, stick up for yourself.

5. (intransitive, with to) To defy, to confront, to stand up to.
6. (intransitive, with to) To maintain a commitment (as, to a proposition or role)

• stick 'em up!
• stick up for
• stickup
• stuck up

• up stick, up-ticks, upticks