Word.ws English Dictionary

from the ground up

from the ground up adverb: from the beginning; starting with the basics, foundation, or fundamentals.

Adverb

from the ground up (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) From the beginning; starting with the basics, foundation, or fundamentals.
    • A bright, ambitious kid just out of technical school, learning railroading from the ground up.2014, Maxwell Grant, The Pooltex Tangle
    Synonyms:
    scratch

Synonyms of from the ground up

Questions about from the ground up

What does from the ground up mean?
From the ground up means from the beginning; starting with the basics, foundation, or fundamentals.
What part of speech is from the ground up?
From the ground up is an adverb.

Words near from the ground up in the dictionary

  1. from the get
  2. from the get-go
  3. from the getgo
  4. from the git
  5. from the git-go
  6. from the ground up
  7. from the heart
  8. from the hip
  9. from the jump
  10. from the off
  11. from the outset

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: from the ground 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: en-au-from the ground up.ogg.

Cite this entry: “from the ground up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/from_the_ground_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.