Word.ws English Dictionary

picking up the tab

picking up the tab is the present participle and gerund of pick up the tab.

Meaning of pick up the tab

Verb

pick up the tab (third-person singular simple present picks up the tab, present participle picking up the tab, simple past and past participle picked up the tab)

  1. (US, idiomatic, intransitive) To accept a bill and pay it, especially at a bar or restaurant.
    • When the bill came to just 33,000 forints, I did something very out of character: I picked up the tab. It blew the budget for the day, but felt great.2014 January 30, Seth Kugel, “Wintertime Bargains in Budapest”, in The New York Times

Questions about picking up the tab

What is picking up the tab the present participle and gerund of?
Picking up the tab is the present participle and gerund of pick up the tab.

Words near picking up the tab in the dictionary

  1. picking up the mantle
  2. picking up the pace
  3. picking up the phone
  4. picking up the pieces
  5. picking up the slack
  6. picking up the tab
  7. picking up the threads
  8. picking up the threads of
  9. picking up what someone is laying down
  10. picking up what someone is putting down
  11. pickings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: picking up the tab (page history and authors); pick up the tab (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: “picking up the tab.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/picking_up_the_tab. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.