Word.ws English Dictionary

take up arms

take up arms verb: to prepare to fight; to arm oneself.

Verb

take up arms (third-person singular simple present takes up arms, present participle taking up arms, simple past took up arms, past participle taken up arms)

  1. (intransitive) To prepare to fight; to arm oneself.

Antonyms of take up arms

Forms of take up arms

third-person singular presenttakes up arms
present participletaking up arms
pasttook up arms
past participletaken up arms

Questions about take up arms

What does take up arms mean?
Take up arms means to prepare to fight; to arm oneself.
What part of speech is take up arms?
Take up arms is a verb.
What is the past tense of take up arms?
The past tense of take up arms is took up arms.

Words near take up arms in the dictionary

  1. take under
  2. take under advisement
  3. take underwing
  4. take up
  5. take up a collection
  6. take up arms
  7. take up cudgels
  8. take up for
  9. take up residence
  10. take up the cudgel for
  11. take up the cudgels

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take up arms (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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