Word.ws English Dictionary

propping up

propping up is the present participle and gerund of prop up.

Meaning of prop up

Verb

prop up (third-person singular simple present props up, present participle propping up, simple past and past participle propped up)

  1. (transitive) To support with, or as if with, a prop.
    • A $465 million federal loan in 2010 helped prop up Tesla at a crucial juncture, and its customers have benefitted from hefty tax incentives.2021 December 13, Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Elon Musk: Person of the Year 2021”, in Time Magazine, archived from the original on 13 Dec 2021
    Synonyms:
    shore up
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To be at the bottom of (a league).
    • Under Moyes, United have fewer home points (21) than Norwich City and Hull City, with their count of 18 goals the same as Fulham and Cardiff City, who prop up the table.2014 March 26, Jamie Jackson, “Fans' revolt leaves David Moyes dead man walking at Manchester United”, in The Guardian

Questions about propping up

What is propping up the present participle and gerund of?
Propping up is the present participle and gerund of prop up.

Words near propping up in the dictionary

  1. Proppian
  2. proppier
  3. proppiest
  4. proppiness
  5. propping
  6. propping up
  7. propping up the bar
  8. proppings
  9. Propps
  10. Proppses
  11. proppy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: propping up (page history and authors); prop 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: “propping up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/propping_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.