Word.ws English Dictionary

put one's hands up

put one's hands up verb: to raise one's hands.

Verb

put one's hands up (third-person singular simple present puts one's hands up, present participle putting one's hands up, simple past and past participle put one's hands up)

  1. To raise one's hands.
  2. To surrender.
  3. (colloquial) To confess or admit (to something).
    • OK, I'll put my hands up to stealing the car, but not to robbing the off-licence.

Forms of put one's hands up

third-person singular presentputs one's hands up
present participleputting one's hands up
past participleput one's hands up
pastput one's hands up
alternative formput one's hand up

Questions about put one's hands up

What does put one's hands up mean?
Put one's hands up means to raise one's hands.
What part of speech is put one's hands up?
Put one's hands up is a verb.
What is the past tense of put one's hands up?
The past tense of put one's hands up is put one's hands up.

Words near put one's hands up in the dictionary

  1. put one's hand to
  2. put one's hand to the plough
  3. put one's hand up
  4. put one's hands on
  5. put one's hands together
  6. put one's hands up
  7. put one's head above the parapet
  8. put one's head in the sand
  9. put one's heart in
  10. put one's heart into
  11. put one's heart on one's sleeve

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put one's hands 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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