Word.ws English Dictionary

seized up

seized up is the simple past and past participle of seize up.

Meaning of seize up

Verb

seize up (third-person singular simple present seizes up, present participle seizing up, simple past and past participle seized up)

  1. (figuratively, intransitive) To stop functioning; to come to a halt.
    • Iceland's foreign currency market has seized up after the three largest banks collapsed.
  2. (intransitive) To stiffen or become tight and difficult to move.
    • It was hard to write as my fingers had seized up with the cold weather.
  3. (intransitive) To stop working suddenly, and become impossible to start again.
    • My car seized up this morning. So I had to catch the bus.

Questions about seized up

What is seized up the simple past and past participle of?
Seized up is the simple past and past participle of seize up.

Words near seized up in the dictionary

  1. seized on
  2. seized out
  3. seized the day
  4. seized the initiative
  5. seized the opportunity
  6. seized up
  7. seized upon
  8. seizer
  9. seizers
  10. seizes
  11. seizes on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: seized up (page history and authors); seize 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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Cite this entry: “seized up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/seized_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.