mask up
mask up verb: to put on a mask, especially a safety mask or a medical face mask.
Verb
mask up (third-person singular simple present masks up, present participle masking up, simple past and past participle masked up)
- To put on a mask, especially a safety mask or a medical face mask.
- Soldiers are trained to immediately mask up at the first sign or suspicion that a chemical attack is in progress and then immediately give the signals themselves. In conjunction with any early warning of chemical attack, the donning of the protective mask will provide the best possible protection...2001, Eric R. Taylor, Lethal Mists: An Introduction to the Natural and Military Sciences of Chemical, Biological Warfare and Terrorism, Huntington, NY: Nova Science Publishers, →ISBN, page 181
- Winston arrived twenty-four hours ago. Before I can enter the ward where he lies, I need to mask up. In theory, the masks we all wear – paper thin, though reinforced with a water-resistant coating – will prevent the virus from contaminating our mouth or nose, even when a patient coughs in our...2021, Rachel Clarke, Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic, London: Little, Brown, →ISBN, page unknown
- Synonyms:
- mask
Examples of mask up in a sentence
- Soldiers are trained to immediately mask up at the first sign or suspicion that a chemical attack is in progress and then immediately give the signals themselves.2001, Eric R. Taylor, Lethal Mists: An Introduction to the Natural and Military Sciences of Chemical, Biological Warfare and Terrorism...
- Before I can enter the ward where he lies, I need to mask up.2021, Rachel Clarke, Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic, London: Little, Brown, →ISBN, page unknown:
Synonyms of mask up
Forms of mask up
| third-person singular present | masks up |
|---|---|
| present participle | masking up |
| past participle | masked up |
| past | masked up |
Origin of mask up
Popularized in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, attested but not common outside technical contexts.
Questions about mask up
- What does mask up mean?
- Mask up means to put on a mask, especially a safety mask or a medical face mask.
- How do you use mask up in a sentence?
- Soldiers are trained to immediately mask up at the first sign or suspicion that a chemical attack is in progress and then immediately give the signals themselves.
- What part of speech is mask up?
- Mask up is a verb.
- What is the past tense of mask up?
- The past tense of mask up is masked up.
Words near mask up in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mask 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: “mask up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mask_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.