Word.ws English Dictionary

seizes up

seizes up is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 seizes up

What is seizes up the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Seizes up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of seize up.

Words near seizes up in the dictionary

  1. seizes on
  2. seizes out
  3. seizes the day
  4. seizes the initiative
  5. seizes the opportunity
  6. seizes up
  7. seizes upon
  8. seizest
  9. seizeth
  10. seizin
  11. seizing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: seizes 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: “seizes up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/seizes_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.