Word.ws English Dictionary

make it up to

make it up to verb: to pay back; to return someone a previous good deed.

Verb

make it up to (third-person singular simple present makes it up to, present participle making it up to, simple past and past participle made it up to)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To pay back; to return someone a previous good deed.
    • After John gave her a lovely wooly hat for her birthday, she wanted to make it up to him so she took him out for dinner.
    • You've been so kind to me, how can I make it up to you?
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To redeem oneself.

Forms of make it up to

third-person singular presentmakes it up to
present participlemaking it up to
past participlemade it up to
pastmade it up to

Questions about make it up to

What does make it up to mean?
Make it up to means to pay back; to return someone a previous good deed.
What part of speech is make it up to?
Make it up to is a verb.
What is the past tense of make it up to?
The past tense of make it up to is made it up to.

Words near make it up to in the dictionary

  1. make it rain
  2. make it snappy
  3. make it so
  4. make it so that
  5. make it up as one goes along
  6. make it up to
  7. make known
  8. make land
  9. make landfall
  10. make lemonade
  11. make light of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make it up to (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-make it up to.ogg.

Cite this entry: “make it up to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/make_it_up_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.