Word.ws English Dictionary

get someone's back up

get someone's back up verb: to annoy or anger someone.

Verb

get someone's back up (third-person singular simple present gets someone's back up, present participle getting someone's back up, simple past got someone's back up, past participle (UK) got someone's back up or (US) gotten someone's back up)

  1. (idiomatic) To annoy or anger someone.
    • That joke really got my boss's back up.
    • Telling someone that her child can and should be doing better and not offering some solutions immediately gets my back up.1970, James N. Casavis, Principal's Guidelines for Action in Parent Conferences, →ISBN, page 121

Forms of get someone's back up

third-person singular presentgets someone's back up
present participlegetting someone's back up
pastgot someone's back up
past participle UKgot someone's back up
past participle USgotten someone's back up

Questions about get someone's back up

What does get someone's back up mean?
Get someone's back up means to annoy or anger someone.
What part of speech is get someone's back up?
Get someone's back up is a verb.
What is the past tense of get someone's back up?
The past tense of get someone's back up is got someone's back up.

Words near get someone's back up in the dictionary

  1. get someone at it
  2. get someone for a Tartar
  3. get someone in a line
  4. get someone there
  5. get someone's back
  6. get someone's back up
  7. get someone's dander up
  8. get someone's drift
  9. get someone's goat
  10. get someone's Irish up
  11. get someone's motor running

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: get someone's back 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-get someone's back up.ogg.

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