Word.ws English Dictionary

put up or shut up

put up or shut up verb: to desist from saying something unless one is able to prove it; to act in a manner that makes further talk unnecessary.

Verb

put up or shut up (third-person singular simple present puts up or shuts up, present participle putting up or shutting up, simple past and past participle put up or shut up)

  1. (idiomatic) To desist from saying something unless one is able to prove it; to act in a manner that makes further talk unnecessary.
    • "If the evidence for modern Darwinian theory is so overwhelming, they should have called the bluff on the other side and come and made their arguments. ... They should have put up or shut up."2005 June 21, Cornelia Dean, “Opting Out in the Debate on Evolution”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 11 Feb 2021, retrieved 22 Jun 2011

Forms of put up or shut up

third-person singular presentputs up or shuts up
present participleputting up or shutting up
past participleput up
pastput up
past participleshut up
pastshut up

Questions about put up or shut up

What does put up or shut up mean?
Put up or shut up means to desist from saying something unless one is able to prove it; to act in a manner that makes further talk unnecessary.
What part of speech is put up or shut up?
Put up or shut up is a verb.
What is the past tense of put up or shut up?
The past tense of put up or shut up is put up.

Words near put up or shut up in the dictionary

  1. put up a show
  2. put up on
  3. put up one's dukes
  4. put up one's hand
  5. put up one's hands
  6. put up or shut up
  7. put up the shutters
  8. put up to
  9. put up with
  10. put upon
  11. put wood in t'hole

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put up or shut 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: En-au-put up or shut up.ogg.

Cite this entry: “put up or shut up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_up_or_shut_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.