Word.ws English Dictionary

put up one's hands

put up one's hands is the alternative form of put one's hands up.

Meaning of put one's hands up

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 up one's hands

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

Questions about put up one's hands

What is put up one's hands the alternative form of?
Put up one's hands is the alternative form of put one's hands up.

Words near put up one's hands in the dictionary

  1. put up a fight
  2. put up a show
  3. put up on
  4. put up one's dukes
  5. put up one's hand
  6. put up one's hands
  7. put up or shut up
  8. put up the shutters
  9. put up to
  10. put up with
  11. put upon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put up one's hands (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “put up one's hands.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_up_one%27s_hands. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.