Word.ws English Dictionary

rolling up one's sleeves

rolling up one's sleeves is the present participle and gerund of roll up one's sleeves.

Meaning of roll up one's sleeves

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
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see roll, up, one's, sleeves.

Questions about rolling up one's sleeves

What is rolling up one's sleeves the present participle and gerund of?
Rolling up one's sleeves is the present participle and gerund of roll up one's sleeves.

Words near rolling up one's sleeves in the dictionary

  1. rolling the tape
  2. rolling the trucks
  3. rolling the windows
  4. rolling up
  5. rolling up on
  6. rolling up one's sleeves
  7. rolling up the sidewalks
  8. rolling with
  9. rolling with it
  10. rolling with the punches
  11. rolling-pin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rolling up one's sleeves (page history and authors); 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.

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