Word.ws English Dictionary

loosening up

loosening up is the present participle and gerund of loosen up.

Meaning of loosen up

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

Noun

loosening up (countable and uncountable, plural loosening ups)

  1. The action of relaxing, especially relaxing the muscles before exercise, sport, etc.
    • His hands by his sides he shook them in a loosening up exercise.1994, Jim Ranie, Jargodin: The Moonlighter, Brisbane: Jim Ranie, page 152

Forms of loosening up

pluralloosening ups

Questions about loosening up

What does loosening up mean?
Loosening up means the action of relaxing, especially relaxing the muscles before exercise, sport, etc.
What is loosening up the present participle and gerund of?
Loosening up is the present participle and gerund of loosen up.
What part of speech is loosening up?
Loosening up is a noun.
What is the plural of loosening up?
The plural of loosening up is loosening ups.

Words near loosening up in the dictionary

  1. looseneth
  2. loosening
  3. loosening someone's tongue
  4. loosening the apron strings
  5. loosening the purse strings
  6. loosening up
  7. loosening ups
  8. loosenings
  9. loosens
  10. loosens someone's tongue
  11. loosens the apron strings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: loosening up (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “loosening up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/loosening_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.