Word.ws English Dictionary

black up

black up verb: to become or make (something) black or darker.

Verb

black up (third-person singular simple present blacks up, present participle blacking up, simple past and past participle blacked up)

  1. (intransitive, literally, transitive) To become or make (something) black or darker.
  2. (intransitive, transitive) To put on or wear blackface makeup.
    • Cantor starts blacking up, right then and there, painting his face with a burnt piece of cork.2016, Zadie Smith, Swing Time, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 191
  3. (transitive) To make something (e.g. a film, cast, story line, etc.) more racially black in character; blackenize.

Forms of black up

third-person singular presentblacks up
present participleblacking up
past participleblacked up
pastblacked up

Questions about black up

What does black up mean?
Black up means to become or make (something) black or darker.
What part of speech is black up?
Black up is a verb.
What is the past tense of black up?
The past tense of black up is blacked up.

Words near black up in the dictionary

  1. Black Turtle
  2. black turtle bean
  3. black turtle beans
  4. Black Turtle of the North
  5. Black Twitter
  6. black up
  7. black urine disease
  8. black velvet
  9. black velveteen
  10. black velvets
  11. black vine weevil

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black 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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Cite this entry: “black up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.