Word.ws English Dictionary

have one's back up

have one's back up verb: to be angry or defensive.

Verb

have one's back up (third-person singular simple present has one's back up, present participle having one's back up, simple past and past participle had one's back up)

  1. (idiomatic) To be angry or defensive.
    • He's had his back up all morning. There's no point in trying to talk to him.
    Synonyms:
    get one's dander up, get one's Irish up

Synonyms of have one's back up

  • get one's dander up
  • get one's Irish up

Forms of have one's back up

third-person singular presenthas one's back up
present participlehaving one's back up
past participlehad one's back up
pasthad one's back up

Questions about have one's back up

What does have one's back up mean?
Have one's back up means to be angry or defensive.
What part of speech is have one's back up?
Have one's back up is a verb.
What is the past tense of have one's back up?
The past tense of have one's back up is had one's back up.

Words near have one's back up in the dictionary

  1. have one foot in the grave
  2. have one foot on a banana peel
  3. have one more time
  4. have one's act together
  5. have one's ass handed to one
  6. have one's back up
  7. have one's bread buttered for life
  8. have one's bread buttered on both sides
  9. have one's cake and eat it
  10. have one's cake and eat it too
  11. have one's ducks in a row

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: have one'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-have one's back up.ogg.

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