Word.ws English Dictionary

ham it up

ham it up verb: to deliberately exaggerate one's emotions or movements, or to overact or act hammily.

Verb

ham it up (third-person singular simple present hams it up, present participle hamming it up, simple past and past participle hammed it up)

  1. (idiomatic) To deliberately exaggerate one's emotions or movements, or to overact or act hammily.
    • Near-synonym: camp it up
    • You can count on him to ham it up for the camera.

Synonyms of ham it up

All synonyms of ham it up

Forms of ham it up

third-person singular presenthams it up
present participlehamming it up
past participlehammed it up
pasthammed it up
alternative formham up

Questions about ham it up

What does ham it up mean?
Ham it up means to deliberately exaggerate one's emotions or movements, or to overact or act hammily.
What part of speech is ham it up?
Ham it up is a verb.
What is the past tense of ham it up?
The past tense of ham it up is hammed it up.

Words near ham it up in the dictionary

  1. ham exam
  2. Ham Green
  3. ham hands
  4. ham hock
  5. ham hocks
  6. ham it up
  7. ham planet
  8. ham planets
  9. ham radio
  10. ham salad
  11. ham salads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ham it 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-ham it up.ogg.

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