Word.ws English Dictionary

person up

person up verb: to show courage, strength, toughness, or responsibility; a gender-neutral alternative to "man up".

Verb

person up (third-person singular simple present persons up, present participle personing up, simple past and past participle personed up)

  1. (humorous, nonstandard) To show courage, strength, toughness, or responsibility; a gender-neutral alternative to "man up".
    • At one point Tuesday, during a testy question period exchange, deputy Tory leader Lisa Raitt urged the prime minister to “person up.”2018 February 6, Rebecca Joseph, “Justin Trudeau’s ‘peoplekind’ remark draws ridicule in U.S. and U.K. media”, in Global News, archived from the original on 17 May 2025
    Synonyms:
    boss up

Synonyms of person up

Forms of person up

third-person singular presentpersons up
present participlepersoning up
past participlepersoned up
pastpersoned up

Origin of person up

By analogy with man up.

Questions about person up

What does person up mean?
Person up means to show courage, strength, toughness, or responsibility; a gender-neutral alternative to "man up".
What part of speech is person up?
Person up is a verb.
What is the past tense of person up?
The past tense of person up is personed up.

Words near person up in the dictionary

  1. person in the streets
  2. person of interest
  3. person of ordinary skill in the art
  4. person under train
  5. person unknown
  6. person up
  7. person-day
  8. person-days
  9. person-hour
  10. person-hours
  11. person-made

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: person 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: “person up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/person_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.