have up
have up verb: to accuse, arrest, try for a criminal act.
Verb
have up (third-person singular simple present has up, present participle having up, simple past and past participle had up)
- To accuse, arrest, try for a criminal act.
- In the police courts it is not uncommon to hear that such and such low persons have been "had up" for "cat and kitten sneaking," i.e., stealing quart and pint pots.1867, Jacob Larwood, John Camden Hotten, The History of Signboards, page 177
- "He broke a dog's leg with a stone, and there was some talk of having him up for it, but the people were afraid of him, and no one would prosecute."1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
- Synonyms:
- charge, criminate, indict, accriminate, accuse, appeach, arraign, becry, tax, incriminate
Synonyms of have up
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Forms of have up
| third-person singular present | has up |
|---|---|
| present participle | having up |
| past participle | had up |
| past | had up |
Questions about have up
- What does have up mean?
- Have up means to accuse, arrest, try for a criminal act.
- What part of speech is have up?
- Have up is a verb.
- What is the past tense of have up?
- The past tense of have up is had up.
Words near have up in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: have 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 up.ogg.
Cite this entry: “have up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/have_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.