Word.ws English Dictionary

police up

police up verb: to clean up an area or an item or person, usually in preparation for an inspection; to police an area for problems.

Verb

police up (third-person singular simple present polices up, present participle policing up, simple past and past participle policed up)

  1. (transitive) To clean up an area or an item or person, usually in preparation for an inspection; to police an area for problems.
    • We have to police up the grounds before the end of the day.

Forms of police up

third-person singular presentpolices up
present participlepolicing up
past participlepoliced up
pastpoliced up

Questions about police up

What does police up mean?
Police up means to clean up an area or an item or person, usually in preparation for an inspection; to police an area for problems.
What part of speech is police up?
Police up is a verb.
What is the past tense of police up?
The past tense of police up is policed up.

Words near police up in the dictionary

  1. police state
  2. police states
  3. police station
  4. police stations
  5. police tape
  6. police up
  7. police van
  8. police vans
  9. police village
  10. police villages
  11. police violence

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: police 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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