Word.ws English Dictionary

pepper up

pepper up verb: to increase in energy; to excite (someone).

Verb

pepper up (third-person singular simple present peppers up, present participle peppering up, simple past and past participle peppered up)

  1. (intransitive, slang, transitive) To increase in energy; to excite (someone).
  2. (informal, transitive) To add pepper (black pepper or chilis) to (food); to spice up (food).

Forms of pepper up

third-person singular presentpeppers up
present participlepeppering up
past participlepeppered up
pastpeppered up

Questions about pepper up

What does pepper up mean?
Pepper up means to increase in energy; to excite (someone).
What part of speech is pepper up?
Pepper up is a verb.
What is the past tense of pepper up?
The past tense of pepper up is peppered up.

Words near pepper up in the dictionary

  1. pepper steak
  2. pepper steaks
  3. Pepper syndrome
  4. pepper tree
  5. pepper trees
  6. pepper up
  7. pepper vine
  8. pepper weevil
  9. pepper weevils
  10. Pepper X
  11. Pepper's ghost

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pepper 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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