Word.ws English Dictionary

summing up

summing up is the present participle and gerund of sum up.

Meaning of sum up

Verb

sum up (third-person singular simple present sums up, present participle summing up, simple past and past participle summed up)

  1. (ambitransitive) To produce a total by adding.
    • We summed up the donations and found that we had just enough to pay the bills.
    Synonyms:
    add up
  2. (ambitransitive) To summarize.
    • So, to sum up your argument, what you are saying is that it is impossible.

Noun

summing up (plural summings up or summing ups)

  1. A summary of the main points, especially (law) a judge's recapitulation of the evidence given to a jury before it withdraws to consider its verdict.
    • Here is one of the most masterly summing ups of the present industrial warfare 'between men and women that has come to this column. It shows the present dilemma and how it has come to be, but it does not suggest a solution, for the writer realizes, in common with most thinking people, that at...1921 September 1, “Cry on Geraldine’s Shoulder”, in Oakland Tribune, volume XCV, number 53, Oakland, Calif.: Tribune Publishing Co., page 10, column 6
    • SOME SUMMING UPS / A lawyer’s opening address is properly a short talk to arouse interest in a selling proposition, the evidence is the sample and the summing up a final effort to close the sale.1922, Robert Stewart Sutliffe, Impressions of an Average Juryman, New York, N.Y.: Herbert H. Foster, page 36

Forms of summing up

pluralsummings up
pluralsumming ups
alternative formsumming-up

Questions about summing up

What does summing up mean?
Summing up means a summary of the main points, especially (law) a judge's recapitulation of the evidence given to a jury before it withdraws to consider its verdict.
What is summing up the present participle and gerund of?
Summing up is the present participle and gerund of sum up.
What part of speech is summing up?
Summing up is a noun.
What is the plural of summing up?
The plural of summing up is summings up.

Words near summing up in the dictionary

  1. summeth
  2. Summey
  3. Summeys
  4. summies
  5. summing
  6. summing up
  7. summing ups
  8. summing-up
  9. summing-ups
  10. summings
  11. summings up

Source and license

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