Word.ws English Dictionary

bug up

bug up verb: to deliberately annoy or irk someone; to deliberately start a conflict with someone.

Verb

bug up (third-person singular simple present bugs up, present participle bugging up, simple past and past participle bugged up)

  1. (intransitive, slang, African-American Vernacular) To deliberately annoy or irk someone; to deliberately start a conflict with someone.
  2. (transitive) To install a bug (listening device) on a person, thing or place.

Forms of bug up

third-person singular presentbugs up
present participlebugging up
past participlebugged up
pastbugged up

Questions about bug up

What does bug up mean?
Bug up means to deliberately annoy or irk someone; to deliberately start a conflict with someone.
What part of speech is bug up?
Bug up is a verb.
What is the past tense of bug up?
The past tense of bug up is bugged up.

Words near bug up in the dictionary

  1. bug shoes
  2. bug spray
  3. bug sprays
  4. bug storm
  5. bug storms
  6. bug up
  7. bug up one's ass
  8. bug woman
  9. bug zapper
  10. bug zappers
  11. bug-a-boo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bug 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-bug up.wav.

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