Word.ws English Dictionary

keyed up

keyed up adjective: nervous; worried. Also the simple past and past participle of key up.

Adjective

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

  1. (colloquial) Nervous; worried.
    • She was all keyed up about the interview.
    • One trouble, he explained, is that dope pushers flock to neighborhoods where two gangs are at war, knowing they will find buyers among members of the gangs who are so keyed up that they welcome any kind of relaxation or who are just plain afraid.1957 September 13, Walter Bernstein, “The Cherubs Are Rumbling”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 18 Feb 2024

Also used as

keyed up is also the simple past and past participle of key up.

Forms of keyed up

comparativemore keyed up
superlativemost keyed up

Origin of keyed up

From the phrasal verb key up.

Questions about keyed up

What does keyed up mean?
Keyed up means nervous; worried.
What part of speech is keyed up?
Keyed up is an adjective.

Words near keyed up in the dictionary

  1. keyed in on
  2. keyed into
  3. keyed off
  4. keyed on
  5. keyed out
  6. keyed up
  7. keyer
  8. keyers
  9. Keyes
  10. keyest
  11. keyfile

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keyed 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:

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