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)
- To inflate by means of a pump.
- Synonyms:
- air up
- 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.
- To excite a person or group to a frenzy.
- The singer has been pumping up the audience.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 present | pumps up |
|---|---|
| present participle | pumping up |
| past participle | pumped up |
| past | pumped 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
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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-pump up.wav.
Cite this entry: “pump up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pump_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
