Word.ws English Dictionary

het up

het up is the simple past and past participle of heat up.

het up is the dialectal form of heat up.

Meaning of heat up

Verb

heat up (third-person singular simple present heats up, present participle heating up, simple past and past participle heated up or (dialectal) heat up or (dialectal) het up)

  1. To heat, to cause to become hotter.
  2. (broadly, figuratively) To become busier or more exciting or intense.
  3. To infuriate or annoy (someone).

Adjective

het up (comparative more het up, superlative most het up)

  1. (colloquial) Excited, agitated or frantic.
    • Try to keep your cool and not get het up.
    • "I reckon," he said, directing his remarks toward no one in particular, "that we've all been rather hasty in this matter, being het up as we were with the strain of what we been through an' so it seems to me, […]1914 October – 1916 July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published 31 October 1921, →OCLC

Forms of het up

Verb
alternative formheat up
alternative formheated up
alternative formheaten up
alternative formhetted up
third-person singular presenthets up
present participlehetting up
past participlehetted up
pasthetted up
past participlehet up
pasthet up
Adjective
comparativemore het up
superlativemost het up

Origin of het up

Irregular form of heat up. The adjective was originally a metaphorical use of the past participle het up (“heated up”), perhaps as a reference to agitation caused by fever or the churn of boiling water, but has since lexicalised as a fossil in standard English.

Questions about het up

What does het up mean?
Het up means excited, agitated or frantic.
What is het up the simple past and past participle of?
Het up is the simple past and past participle of heat up.
What part of speech is het up?
Het up is an adjective.

Words near het up in the dictionary

  1. Hesychian
  2. Hesychius
  3. het
  4. het Bildt
  5. Het Hogeland
  6. het up
  7. het-
  8. heta
  9. hetacillin
  10. hetaera
  11. hetaerae

Source and license

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