Word.ws English Dictionary

stitch-up

stitch-up noun: an act designed to maliciously or dishonestly incriminate someone.

Noun

stitch-up (plural stitch-ups)

  1. (UK, slang) An act designed to maliciously or dishonestly incriminate someone.
    • The police planted the gun in my car. It was a stitch-up.
  2. (UK, slang) Something arranged deceitfully and in secret.
    • Wilson's election as leader was a stitch-up by the committee.
    • Lynch added: "Our findings from our FOI requests on ticket office closures shows the whole process to be a stitch-up between the train operators, under the auspices of the Rail Delivery Group[,] and ministers.2023 October 18, Mel Holley, “Network News: Harper attacks Labour over strikes... but unions hit back”, in RAIL, number 994, page 18

Forms of stitch-up

pluralstitch-ups

Origin of stitch-up

From stitch + up.

Questions about stitch-up

What does stitch-up mean?
Stitch-up means an act designed to maliciously or dishonestly incriminate someone.
What part of speech is stitch-up?
Stitch-up is a noun.
What is the plural of stitch-up?
The plural of stitch-up is stitch-ups.

Words near stitch-up in the dictionary

  1. stitch in the ditch
  2. stitch incoming
  3. stitch together
  4. stitch up
  5. stitch-back
  6. stitch-up
  7. stitch-ups
  8. stitchable
  9. stitchback
  10. stitchbird
  11. stitchbirds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stitch-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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-stitch-up.ogg.

Cite this entry: “stitch-up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stitch-up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.