Word.ws English Dictionary

roll up one's sleeves

roll up one's sleeves verb: to prepare to work.

Verb

roll up one's sleeves (third-person singular simple present rolls up one's sleeves, present participle rolling up one's sleeves, simple past and past participle rolled up one's sleeves)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To prepare to work.
    • "We could quite easily have folded today but thankfully they rolled up their sleeves and got back into it. We could even have won it. We had a couple of great opportunities but we just ran out of juice."2011 October 1, Phil Dawkes quoting Steve Bruce, “Sunderland 2 - 2 West Brom”, in BBC Sport
    • TNo more pomp and ceremony, the new pope seemed to be saying, but sleeves rolled up and joining the fight for social and economic justice.2025 April 21, Peter Stanford, “Pope Francis obituary”, in The Guardian
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see roll, up, one's, sleeves.

Synonyms of roll up one's sleeves

All synonyms of roll up one's sleeves

Forms of roll up one's sleeves

third-person singular presentrolls up one's sleeves
present participlerolling up one's sleeves
past participlerolled up one's sleeves
pastrolled up one's sleeves

Questions about roll up one's sleeves

What does roll up one's sleeves mean?
Roll up one's sleeves means to prepare to work.
What part of speech is roll up one's sleeves?
Roll up one's sleeves is a verb.
What is the past tense of roll up one's sleeves?
The past tense of roll up one's sleeves is rolled up one's sleeves.

Words near roll up one's sleeves in the dictionary

  1. roll the tape
  2. roll the trucks
  3. roll tide
  4. roll up
  5. roll up on
  6. roll up one's sleeves
  7. roll up the sidewalks
  8. roll ups
  9. roll with
  10. roll with it
  11. roll with the punches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roll up one's sleeves (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-roll up one's sleeves.ogg.

Cite this entry: “roll up one's sleeves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/roll_up_one%27s_sleeves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.