Word.ws English Dictionary

kicking up

kicking up is the present participle and gerund of kick up.

Meaning of kick up

Verb

kick up (third-person singular simple present kicks up, present participle kicking up, simple past and past participle kicked up)

  1. To rear back; to become more active or restless; to speed up.
  2. (US, broadly, figuratively, informal, transitive) To raise, to increase (a price).
    • The rent has been kicked up again.
  3. (figuratively, informal, transitive) To stir up (trouble), to cause (a disturbance).
    • In truth, these little men were so far out of the reach of their masters, that they considered themselves as little less than immortal, and often kicked up a dust for the sole purpose of showing their authority.1823, James Kirke Paulding, Koningsmarke, the Long Finne, page 45
  4. (colloquial, transitive) To make more exciting.
    • kick it up a notch
  5. (informal, intransitive) To show anger (about something).
    • He kicked up about it when they told him the train had been cancelled.
  6. (US, informal, intransitive) To function improperly; to show signs of disorder; (of an illness) to flare up.
    • The car is kicking up.

See all 9 meanings of kick up

Questions about kicking up

What is kicking up the present participle and gerund of?
Kicking up is the present participle and gerund of kick up.

Words near kicking up in the dictionary

  1. kicking the tires and lighting the fires
  2. kicking the tyres
  3. kicking to
  4. kicking to the curb
  5. kicking to the kerb
  6. kicking up
  7. kicking up a fuss
  8. kicking up dust
  9. kicking up one's heels
  10. kicking upstairs
  11. kicking with

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kicking up (page history and authors); kick 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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