Word.ws English Dictionary

pump up

pump up verb: to inflate by means of a pump.

Verb

pump up (third-person singular simple present pumps up, present participle pumping up, simple past and past participle pumped up)

  1. (transitive) To inflate by means of a pump.
    Synonyms:
    air up
    1. (transitive) To do so with a pumping action.
      • For someone who is in shape, it is not difficult to pump up a car tire with a bicycle pump; it is merely tedious. But you can get the job done if you need it bad enough.
  2. (figuratively, transitive) To excite a person or group to a frenzy.
    • The singer has been pumping up the audience.
  3. (intransitive, transitive) To cause one's muscles to swell by means of focused weightlifting.
    • I want to pump you up.
    • He's gonna help me pump up.
  4. (transitive) To cause (something) to increase in intensity, salience or other traits beyond what is reasonable.
    • You have to pump up the relatability of the characters in your screenplay.
  5. (transitive) To increase the volume of (something).
    • pump up the jam
    • pump up the jukebox

Synonyms of pump up

Forms of pump up

third-person singular presentpumps up
present participlepumping up
past participlepumped up
pastpumped up

Questions about pump up

What does pump up mean?
Pump up means to inflate by means of a pump.
What part of speech is pump up?
Pump up is a verb.
What is the past tense of pump up?
The past tense of pump up is pumped up.

Words near pump up in the dictionary

  1. pump someone's tires
  2. pump trolley
  3. pump trolleys
  4. pump truck
  5. pump trucks
  6. pump up
  7. pump up someone's tires
  8. pump valve
  9. pump valves
  10. pump-action shotgun
  11. pump-action shotguns

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pump 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-pump up.wav.

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