Word.ws English Dictionary

beat up

/ˈbiːt ˌʌp/

beat up verb: to give a severe beating to; to assault violently with repeated blows.

Verb

beat up (third-person singular simple present beats up, present participle beating up, simple past beat up or (nonstandard) beated up, past participle beaten up or (colloquial) beat up or (nonstandard) beated up)

  1. (transitive) To give a severe beating to; to assault violently with repeated blows.
    • I got beaten up by thugs on my way home.
    • You don't beat people up, so that you can live in a society where nobody would beat you up.
  2. (transitive) To wake up earlier than (somebody).
    • I wanted to beat you up this morning and make breakfast for you for once.
  3. (obsolete) To attack suddenly; to alarm.
    • At Breach of Wall, or Hedge-ſurprize, ¶ She ſhar’d in th’ hazard and the prize : ¶ At beating quarters up, or forrage, ¶ Behav’d her ſelf with matchleſſe courage ;1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “Canto II”, in Hudibras. The First Part. […], London: […] J. G. for Richard Marriot, […], →OCLC, page 49
    • On this occaſion, the diligent prior o St. Andrews aſſembled 600 horſe, with which he aſſailed the French, beat up their quarters, intercepted their proviſions, and cut off their ſtraggling parties.1770, John Belfour, A New History of Scotland, pages 137–138
  4. To cause, by some other means, injuries comparable to the result of being beaten up.
    • He [= a paraglider pilot] flew into a hill and beat himself up pretty badly.2008 October 29, on Real Rescues (a British TV program)
  5. (reflexive) To feel badly guilty and accuse (oneself) over something.
    • Don’t beat yourself up over such a minor mistake.
  6. To make (someone) feel badly guilty and accuse (them) over something.
    • It's getting louder and louder
      Every time I think about you, about you
      I'll be better off without you, without you
      I wish my heart would stop, wish my heart would stop
      Beating me up (whoa, oh, whoa)
      Beating me up (whoa, oh, whoa)
      Beating me up2015 May 12, Rachel Platten, Dave Bassett, Brian West, “Beating Me Up”, in Fight Song, performed by Rachel Platten
  7. (WW2-air-pilots'-usage) To repeatedly bomb a military target or targets.
  8. To get something done (derived from the idea of beating for game).
  9. (intransitive) To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.
  10. (dated, intransitive) To disturb; to pay an untimely visit to.
  11. (dated, intransitive) To go diligently about in order to get helpers or participants in an enterprise.
    • to beat up for recruits, or for volunteers

Adjective

beat up (comparative more beat up, superlative most beat up)

  1. (slang) Battered by time and usage; beaten up.

Noun

beat up (plural beat ups)

  1. A person who, or thing that, has been beaten up.
    • Well, two beat ups (the bullied kids) would split that cash fifty-fifty.2009 August 10, Thomas Cody Mullenaux, Numbskull, page 257
  2. (UK, slang) A raid.
    • These hit-and-run LRDG attacks — “beat-ups,” the patrols were beginning to call them — continued, and added to the enemy's mounting difficulties.1987, John W. Gordon, The Other Desert War: British Special Forces in North Africa, 1940-1943, page 86
    Synonyms:
    hazing
  3. A beating; a hazing.
    • We gave him wedgies and did mock beat-ups. We never hurt him or intended to hurt him, but he went along with our tough guy sort of image, and took it tongue in cheek and got it.2008, Josh Frank, Charlie Buckholtz, In Heaven Everything Is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre, page 243
    • Frequently on guest nights beat ups were held by the Third Term, and cadets of the First Term (and, sometimes, the Second Term) were singled out individually.2010, John Golley, Jet, page 14
    Synonyms:
    hazing
  4. (Australia, New Zealand, UK) An artificially or disingenuously manufactured alarm or outcry, especially one agitated by or through the media.
    • To the people of CQ^([Central Queensland]) the Internet is nothing more than the subject of media beat ups about pornography and bomb making.1995 September, David Jones, “1000 Users on a 486”, in AUUG ′95 & Asia-Pacific World Wide Web ′95 Conference & Exhibition: Conference Proceedings, page 106
    • Media beat-ups and xenophobia are nothing new to the Vietnamese people.2007, Pauline Nguyen, Luke Nguyen, Mark Jensen, Secrets of the Red Lantern: Stories and Vietnamese Recipes from the Heart, page 189
  5. A tree planted later than others in a plantation.
    • The data include measurements from both the original tree plantings and subsequent beat-ups.2003, K. J. Foot, M. Hislop, S. McNeilly, “The effect of green composted waste on tree establishment on landfill”, in Heather M. Moore, Howard R. Fox, Scott Elliott, editors, Land Reclamation...

beat up meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi and Nepali

beat up in Hindi

to beat up
पीटना pīṭnā

beat up in Tamil

உளம்பு

beat up in Punjabi

to beat up
تننا tunnṇā

beat up in Nepali

to beat up
पिट्नु piṭnu
More languagesFewer languages
beat up in Tagalog
bugbugin, mambugbog, mabugbog
beat up in Thai
ทุบตี, ทำร้าย tam-ráai, กระทืบ grà-tʉ̂ʉp, โทษ tôot
beat up in Vietnamese
đánh đập

Examples of beat up in a sentence

  • 2009, Newstalk ZB, Hydro project claims "a beat up" - Brownlee, Newstalk ZB.
  • Pa Blanken tells me that the Japs beat up our camp a month ago and we have lost all our heavy gear and moved up into the hills - he does not know where.1948, Freddie Spencer Chapman, The Jungle Is Neutral, published 2003, pages 272–275:

Synonyms of beat up

Forms of beat up

Verb
third-person singular presentbeats up
present participlebeating up
pastbeat up
past participlebeaten up
alternative formbeat-up
past (nonstandard)beated up
past participle (colloquial)beat up
past participle (nonstandard)beated up
Adjective
comparativemore beat up
superlativemost beat up
Noun
pluralbeat ups

Words formed from beat up

Questions about beat up

What does beat up mean?
Beat up means to give a severe beating to; to assault violently with repeated blows.
What is beat up in Hindi?
Beat up in Hindi is पीटना (pīṭnā). See Beat up meaning in Hindi.
How do you use beat up in a sentence?
2009, Newstalk ZB, Hydro project claims "a beat up" - Brownlee, Newstalk ZB.
What part of speech is beat up?
Beat up can be a verb, an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce beat up?
Beat up is pronounced /ˈbiːt ˌʌp/.
What is the past tense of beat up?
The past tense of beat up is beat up.

Words near beat up in the dictionary

  1. beat time
  2. beat to
  3. beat to a pulp
  4. beat to quarters
  5. beat to the punch
  6. beat up
  7. beat up on
  8. beat up someone's quarters
  9. beat ups
  10. beat with the ugly stick
  11. beat your neighbour

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beat up (page history and authors); पीटना (Hindi) (page history and authors); beat up (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); تننا (Punjabi) (page history and authors); पिट्नु (Nepali) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-NaomiAmethyst-beat up.wav.

Cite this entry: “beat up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beat_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.