Word.ws English Dictionary

roughing up

roughing up is the present participle and gerund of rough up.

Meaning of rough up

Verb

rough up (third-person singular simple present roughs up, present participle roughing up, simple past and past participle roughed up)

  1. To manhandle or beat up.
    • The gangsters roughed him up a little.
  2. To make rough, to roughen (especially doing so to wood while raising the grain).
  3. (historical) To rub the loam that covers the brick wall of a mould to make it adhere firmly.

Questions about roughing up

What is roughing up the present participle and gerund of?
Roughing up is the present participle and gerund of rough up.

Words near roughing up in the dictionary

  1. roughing mill
  2. roughing mills
  3. roughing out
  4. roughing pump
  5. roughing pumps
  6. roughing up
  7. roughing up the bullpen
  8. roughings
  9. roughish
  10. roughishly
  11. roughishness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roughing up (page history and authors); rough 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.

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