Word.ws English Dictionary

getup

getup noun: clothes, costume or outfit, especially one that is ostentatious or otherwise unusual. Also the alternative form of get-up-and-go.

Noun

getup (plural getups)

  1. (US, informal) Clothes, costume or outfit, especially one that is ostentatious or otherwise unusual.
    • When near the buildings I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get–up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I
    • The Schnitzelbank Band, each member attired in an odd getup, received many comments for the manner in which the men marched.1917 October 28, “1,200 Reading Firemen March”, in Reading Eagle, Pennsylvania, USA, page 4
  2. (informal) A fight or altercation.
    • "A bully. Picked on fellows. He loved to fight. But I never saw him in a getup with a fellow his own size."2002 January 28, Andrea Sachs, “Caricature Builder”, in Time
  3. Layout and production style, as of a magazine.

Also used as

getup is also the alternative form of get-up-and-go.

Examples of getup in a sentence

  • [A] parade of costumed cadets trots by: a shark costume, an Uncle Sam getup and three young men in form-fitting bodysuits.2009 June 8, “Worried They Will Miss the War: Inside the Mind of West Point's Class of 2009”, in Newsweek:
  • They wore jorts and crop tops; or strappy, S&M-influenced getups; or pajamas emblazoned with cartoons.2025 May 5, Spencer Kornhaber, “Is This the Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN:

All 14 example sentences with getup

Forms of getup

pluralgetups
alternative formget up
alternative formget-up

Plural of getup: getups

Origin of getup

From get + up.

Questions about getup

What does getup mean?
Getup means clothes, costume or outfit, especially one that is ostentatious or otherwise unusual.
How do you use getup in a sentence?
[A] parade of costumed cadets trots by: a shark costume, an Uncle Sam getup and three young men in form-fitting bodysuits.
What part of speech is getup?
Getup is a noun.
What is the plural of getup?
The plural of getup is getups.

Words near getup in the dictionary

  1. Gettysburgians
  2. Getuli
  3. Getulia
  4. Getulian
  5. Getulians
  6. getup
  7. getups
  8. Getz
  9. Getzes
  10. Getzler
  11. Geuda Springs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: getup (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-getup.wav.

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