Word.ws English Dictionary

put someone's back up

put someone's back up verb: synonym of get someone's back up: to annoy someone.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) Synonym of get someone's back up: to annoy someone.
    • You really put her back up there, John.
    • [T]hat is exactly the kind of remark that is guaranteed to put certain masters' backs up, isn't it?1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section II, page 25

Synonyms of put someone's back up

Forms of put someone's back up

third-person singular presentputs someone's back up
present participleputting someone's back up
past participleput someone's back up
pastput someone's back up

Questions about put someone's back up

What does put someone's back up mean?
Put someone's back up means synonym of get someone's back up: to annoy someone.
What part of speech is put someone's back up?
Put someone's back up is a verb.
What is the past tense of put someone's back up?
The past tense of put someone's back up is put someone's back up.

Words near put someone's back up in the dictionary

  1. put someone out of their misery
  2. put someone through their paces
  3. put someone to their trumps
  4. put someone under the screw
  5. put someone wise
  6. put someone's back up
  7. put someone's light out
  8. put someone's lights out
  9. put someone's pipe out
  10. put something behind one
  11. put something down to experience

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put someone's back 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: En-au-put someone's back up.ogg.

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