Word.ws English Dictionary

growing up

growing up is the present participle and gerund of grow up.

Meaning of grow up

Verb

grow up (third-person singular simple present grows up, present participle growing up, simple past grew up, past participle grown up)

  1. (intransitive) To mature and become an adult.
    • What do you want to be when you grow up?
    Synonyms:
    age, upgrow
  2. (intransitive) To start to develop; to flourish.
    • Socialism grew up in the industrial cities.
    Synonyms:
    blossom, prosper
  3. (idiomatic, intransitive) To stop acting as or like a child (often used as an imperative interjection).
    • Will you grow up please, and stop making silly faces?

See all 4 meanings of grow up

Questions about growing up

What is growing up the present participle and gerund of?
Growing up is the present participle and gerund of grow up.

Words near growing up in the dictionary

  1. growing pains
  2. growing season
  3. growing seasons
  4. growing some balls
  5. growing teratoma syndrome
  6. growing up
  7. growingly
  8. growings
  9. growk
  10. growl
  11. growled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: growing up (page history and authors); grow 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: “growing up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/growing_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.