Word.ws English Dictionary

answer up

answer up verb: to come forth with a prompt answer.

Verb

answer up (third-person singular simple present answers up, present participle answering up, simple past and past participle answered up)

  1. (intransitive) To come forth with a prompt answer.
    • "Answer up, Tom," but Tom didn't answer up. So he said it again, and Tom didn't answer up again; and come to look, there warn't anything there but the mule—Tom was gone.c. 1884, Mark Twain, “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians”, in Walter Blair, editor, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians: And Other Unfinished Stories, published 2011, page 63
    • Come now, if you don't answer up at once it will be too late, "for I shall run you right to the station. What happened to the man who went overboard?"1912, The Bradys and the Yellow Giant

Forms of answer up

third-person singular presentanswers up
present participleanswering up
past participleanswered up
pastanswered up

Questions about answer up

What does answer up mean?
Answer up means to come forth with a prompt answer.
What part of speech is answer up?
Answer up is a verb.
What is the past tense of answer up?
The past tense of answer up is answered up.

Words near answer up in the dictionary

  1. answer the call
  2. answer the call of nature
  3. answer the helm
  4. answer to
  5. answer to someone's prayers
  6. answer up
  7. answer'd
  8. answerabilities
  9. answerability
  10. answerable
  11. answerableness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: answer up (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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