Word.ws English Dictionary

buddy up

buddy up verb: to form small teams, especially pairs, often to reduce the likelihood of any one person suffering harm without being noticed or to suit the nature of a task to be accomplished.

Verb

buddy up (third-person singular simple present buddies up, present participle buddying up, simple past and past participle buddied up)

  1. (informal, intransitive) To form small teams, especially pairs, often to reduce the likelihood of any one person suffering harm without being noticed or to suit the nature of a task to be accomplished
  2. To ally with, team up with, cooperate with.

Forms of buddy up

third-person singular presentbuddies up
present participlebuddying up
past participlebuddied up
pastbuddied up

Questions about buddy up

What does buddy up mean?
Buddy up means to form small teams, especially pairs, often to reduce the likelihood of any one person suffering harm without being noticed or to suit the nature of a task to be accomplished.
What part of speech is buddy up?
Buddy up is a verb.
What is the past tense of buddy up?
The past tense of buddy up is buddied up.

Words near buddy up in the dictionary

  1. buddy store
  2. buddy stores
  3. buddy system
  4. buddy systems
  5. buddy taping
  6. buddy up
  7. buddy wrapping
  8. buddy-buddies
  9. buddy-buddy
  10. buddyhood
  11. buddying

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buddy 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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