Word.ws English Dictionary

striking up

striking up is the present participle and gerund of strike up.

Meaning of strike up

Verb

strike up (third-person singular simple present strikes up, present participle striking up, simple past struck up, past participle struck up or (rare or archaic) stricken up)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To start something with somebody else, such as a conversation or relationship.
    • To make him feel welcome, she struck up a conversation with the newly arrived guest.
  2. (ergative, idiomatic, intransitive) To start something, usually playing live music.
    • The band struck up and everyone started to dance.
  3. To raise (as sheet metal), in making dishes, pans, etc., by blows or pressure in a die.

Questions about striking up

What is striking up the present participle and gerund of?
Striking up is the present participle and gerund of strike up.

Words near striking up in the dictionary

  1. striking the colors
  2. striking the iron while it's hot
  3. striking the tent
  4. striking through
  5. striking twice
  6. striking up
  7. Striking Viking
  8. striking while the iron is hot
  9. strikingest
  10. strikingly
  11. strikingness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: striking up (page history and authors); strike 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: “striking up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/striking_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.