Word.ws English Dictionary

sneak up

sneak up verb: to approach a person or animal without being seen or heard.

Verb

sneak up (third-person singular simple present sneaks up, present participle sneaking up, simple past and past participle sneaked up or (chiefly US, informal) snuck up)

  1. To approach a person or animal without being seen or heard
    • If you sneak up from behind like that, you'll give me a heart attack!
  2. To deliver a sudden effect, often unexpectedly and without warning.
    • Watch out for that brown liquor. It sneaks up on you quickly.
    • The weekend sneaked up on me.

Forms of sneak up

third-person singular presentsneaks up
present participlesneaking up
past participlesneaked up
pastsneaked up
alternative formsneak up on
past participle US (informal)snuck up
past US (informal)snuck up

Questions about sneak up

What does sneak up mean?
Sneak up means to approach a person or animal without being seen or heard.
What part of speech is sneak up?
Sneak up is a verb.
What is the past tense of sneak up?
The past tense of sneak up is sneaked up.

Words near sneak up in the dictionary

  1. sneak peeks
  2. sneak preview
  3. sneak previews
  4. sneak thief
  5. sneak thieves
  6. sneak up
  7. sneak-cup
  8. sneak-cups
  9. sneakage
  10. sneakbox
  11. sneakboxes

Source and license

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