Word.ws English Dictionary

seizing up

seizing up is the present participle and gerund 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 seizing up

What is seizing up the present participle and gerund of?
Seizing up is the present participle and gerund of seize up.

Words near seizing up in the dictionary

  1. seizing on
  2. seizing out
  3. seizing the day
  4. seizing the initiative
  5. seizing the opportunity
  6. seizing up
  7. seizing upon
  8. seizings
  9. seizins
  10. seizor
  11. seizors

Source and license

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