buoy up
buoy up verb: to uplift, hearten, inspire, or raise the spirits of.
Verb
buoy up (third-person singular simple present buoys up, present participle buoying up, simple past and past participle buoyed up)
- To uplift, hearten, inspire, or raise the spirits of.
- I have supported with very great zeal, and I am told with some degree of success, those opinions, or if his Grace likes another expression better, those old prejudices, which buoy up the ponderous mass of his nobility, wealth, and title.1796, Edmund Burke, A letter from the Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a noble lord: on the attacks made upon him and his pension, London: J. Owen and F. & C. Rivington
- With this training complete, and the crews of his cruisers and destroyers somewhat buoyed up by the experience, he then headed into the seas around Guadalcanal on the 9th[…]2020 December 9, Drachinifel, 7:05 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - Cape Esperance (IJN 1 : 2 USN), archived from the original on 04 Dec 2022
- To keep afloat; to provide with buoyancy.
Forms of buoy up
| third-person singular present | buoys up |
|---|---|
| present participle | buoying up |
| past participle | buoyed up |
| past | buoyed up |
Questions about buoy up
- What does buoy up mean?
- Buoy up means to uplift, hearten, inspire, or raise the spirits of.
- What part of speech is buoy up?
- Buoy up is a verb.
- What is the past tense of buoy up?
- The past tense of buoy up is buoyed up.
Words near buoy up in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: buoy 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-buoy up.ogg.
Cite this entry: “buoy up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/buoy_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.