Word.ws English Dictionary

chirk up

chirk up verb: to make more cheerful; to cause to perk up.

Verb

chirk up (third-person singular simple present chirks up, present participle chirking up, simple past and past participle chirked up)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To make more cheerful; to cause to perk up.
    • "Well, I think," said Mis' Jane Moran, "that we've hit on the only way we could have hit on to chirk each other up over a hard time."1912, Zona Gale, Christmas
    • My idea was to chirk him up at the start.1917, Sewell Ford, Wilt Thou Torchy
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To become more cheerful; to perk up or become animated or enthusiastic.
    • "Go ahead," he says, and I see Jim chirk up to listen.1894, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Tom Sawyer Abroad
    • Now you jest wipe your eyes and chirk up.1908, Grace Livingston Hill Lutz, Marcia Schuyler

Forms of chirk up

third-person singular presentchirks up
present participlechirking up
past participlechirked up
pastchirked up

Questions about chirk up

What does chirk up mean?
Chirk up means to make more cheerful; to cause to perk up.
What part of speech is chirk up?
Chirk up is a verb.
What is the past tense of chirk up?
The past tense of chirk up is chirked up.

Words near chirk up in the dictionary

  1. Chirino
  2. Chirinos
  3. Chiriqui
  4. Chiriquí
  5. chirk
  6. chirk up
  7. chirked
  8. chirked up
  9. chirker
  10. chirkest
  11. chirkier

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chirk 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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