put up to
put up to verb: to encourage or trick (someone) to perform (an action which is foolish or wrong).
Verb
put up to (third-person singular simple present puts up to, present participle putting up to, simple past and past participle put up to)
- To encourage or trick (someone) to perform (an action which is foolish or wrong).
- "He's goin' to that well there after water."
"We ain't dyin' of thirst, are we? That's foolishness."
"Well, somebody put him up to it, an' he's doin' it."1895, Stephen Crane, A Mystery of Heroism - "I done the other things—Brace he put me up to it, and persuaded me, and promised he'd make me rich, some day, and I done it, and I'm sorry I done it."1896, Mark Twain, chapter 11, in Tom Sawyer, Detective
- "He's goin' to that well there after water."
Synonyms of put up to
Forms of put up to
| third-person singular present | puts up to |
|---|---|
| present participle | putting up to |
| past participle | put up to |
| past | put up to |
Questions about put up to
- What does put up to mean?
- Put up to means to encourage or trick (someone) to perform (an action which is foolish or wrong).
- What part of speech is put up to?
- Put up to is a verb.
- What is the past tense of put up to?
- The past tense of put up to is put up to.
Words near put up to in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: put up to (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 to.ogg.
Cite this entry: “put up to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_up_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.