Word.ws English Dictionary

ground up

ground up is the simple past and past participle of grind up.

Meaning of grind up

Verb

grind up (third-person singular simple present grinds up, present participle grinding up, simple past and past participle ground up)

  1. (transitive) To reduce (something) to powder by grinding.
    • You have to grind up the cardamom pods.
  2. (intransitive) To dance in a sexually suggestive manner close to another person.
    • He's been grinding up on her.
  3. (transitive) To wear down on (someone); to be extremely draining or stressful; to cause burnout.
    • This place will grind you up.
  4. (transitive) To skateboard on a surface or in a location.
    • He's grinding up the skate park.

Questions about ground up

What is ground up the simple past and past participle of?
Ground up is the simple past and past participle of grind up.

Words near ground up in the dictionary

  1. ground truthed
  2. ground truthing
  3. ground truths
  4. ground tyrant
  5. ground tyrants
  6. ground up
  7. ground wallah
  8. ground wallahs
  9. ground water
  10. ground waters
  11. ground wire

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ground up (page history and authors); grind 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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Cite this entry: “ground up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ground_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.