Word.ws English Dictionary

roll up the sidewalks

roll up the sidewalks verb: to close all commercial businesses for the day.

Verb

roll up the sidewalks (third-person singular simple present rolls up the sidewalks, present participle rolling up the sidewalks, simple past and past participle rolled up the sidewalks)

  1. (US, idiomatic, informal) To close all commercial businesses for the day.
    • 'Japanese nightlife can be frantic,' Joanna said, 'but they start to roll up the sidewalks early by Western standards.'2012, Dean Koontz, The Key to Midnight: A gripping thriller of heart-stopping suspense, →ISBN
    • “No night life, I'm afraid,” he'd told her, “They roll up the sidewalks at 8 PM."2012, Jacqueline Rhoades, The Alpha's Mate, →ISBN

Forms of roll up the sidewalks

third-person singular presentrolls up the sidewalks
present participlerolling up the sidewalks
past participlerolled up the sidewalks
pastrolled up the sidewalks

Questions about roll up the sidewalks

What does roll up the sidewalks mean?
Roll up the sidewalks means to close all commercial businesses for the day.
What part of speech is roll up the sidewalks?
Roll up the sidewalks is a verb.
What is the past tense of roll up the sidewalks?
The past tense of roll up the sidewalks is rolled up the sidewalks.

Words near roll up the sidewalks in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roll up the sidewalks (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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