Word.ws English Dictionary

square up

square up verb: to get ready for a fight.

Verb

square up (third-person singular simple present squares up, present participle squaring up, simple past and past participle squared up)

  1. (intransitive) To get ready for a fight.
    Synonyms:
    square off
    Antonyms:
    stand down
  2. (intransitive) To adopt a fighting stance.
    • Samir Nasri was shown a second yellow card moments earlier after squaring up to Jamie Vardy, with the two players going forehead to forehead after exchanging insults.2017 March 14, Stuart James, “Leicester stun Sevilla to reach last eight after Kasper Schmeichel save”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2020
    Synonyms:
    square off
    Antonyms:
    stand down
  3. To face (someone) in a contest.
    Synonyms:
    square off
    Antonyms:
    stand down
  4. (intransitive) To pay back money that is owed.
    • Let me know how much my share in the activity is and I'll square up with you tomorrow.
  5. (transitive, die making) To mill (blocks, inserts, etc) into precisely square condition.

Synonyms of square up

Antonyms

Forms of square up

third-person singular presentsquares up
present participlesquaring up
past participlesquared up
pastsquared up

Questions about square up

What does square up mean?
Square up means to get ready for a fight.
What part of speech is square up?
Square up is a verb.
What is the past tense of square up?
The past tense of square up is squared up.

Words near square up in the dictionary

  1. square stern
  2. square sterns
  3. square tab shingle
  4. square tab shingles
  5. square the circle
  6. square up
  7. square wave
  8. square waves
  9. square yard
  10. square yards
  11. Square-1

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: square 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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