Word.ws English Dictionary

creep up on

creep up on verb: to sneakily arrive near someone in a position to startle them; to startle someone by creeping up behind them.

Verb

creep up on (third-person singular simple present creeps up on, present participle creeping up on, simple past and past participle crept up on)

  1. (transitive) To sneakily arrive near someone in a position to startle them; to startle someone by creeping up behind them.

Forms of creep up on

third-person singular presentcreeps up on
present participlecreeping up on
past participlecrept up on
pastcrept up on

Questions about creep up on

What does creep up on mean?
Creep up on means to sneakily arrive near someone in a position to startle them; to startle someone by creeping up behind them.
What part of speech is creep up on?
Creep up on is a verb.
What is the past tense of creep up on?
The past tense of creep up on is crept up on.

Words near creep up on in the dictionary

  1. creep on
  2. creep out
  3. creep shot
  4. creep shots
  5. creep up
  6. creep up on
  7. creep-shame
  8. creep-shamed
  9. creep-shames
  10. creep-shaming
  11. creepage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: creep up on (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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