Word.ws English Dictionary

loosen up

loosen up verb: to become loose; to loosen; to relax (a muscle, etc.).

Verb

loosen up (third-person singular simple present loosens up, present participle loosening up, simple past and past participle loosened up)

  1. (intransitive) To become loose; to loosen; to relax (a muscle, etc.).
  2. (colloquial) To relax; to act less seriously.
    • Michael in turn benefits from Tom. He loosens up a bit, stops talking so much like one of the bad novels he used to read, and learns to give his intellect a rest once in a while in deference to the emotions.1983 December 31, Kenneth Hale-Wehmann, “The Business of Sex and Affection”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 24, page 8

Forms of loosen up

third-person singular presentloosens up
present participleloosening up
past participleloosened up
pastloosened up

Origin of loosen up

Compare Old Norse leysa upp (“loosen up”).

Questions about loosen up

What does loosen up mean?
Loosen up means to become loose; to loosen; to relax (a muscle, etc.).
What part of speech is loosen up?
Loosen up is a verb.
What is the past tense of loosen up?
The past tense of loosen up is loosened up.

Words near loosen up in the dictionary

  1. loosen one's tongue
  2. loosen someone's lips
  3. loosen someone's tongue
  4. loosen the apron strings
  5. loosen the purse strings
  6. loosen up
  7. loosenable
  8. loosened
  9. loosened someone's tongue
  10. loosened the apron strings
  11. loosened the purse strings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: loosen 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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