Word.ws English Dictionary

chirking up

chirking up is the present participle and gerund of chirk up.

Meaning of chirk 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
  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

Questions about chirking up

What is chirking up the present participle and gerund of?
Chirking up is the present participle and gerund of chirk up.

Words near chirking up in the dictionary

  1. chirker
  2. chirkest
  3. chirkier
  4. chirkiest
  5. chirking
  6. chirking up
  7. chirks
  8. chirks up
  9. chirky
  10. chirl
  11. CHIRLA

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chirking up (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated:

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