Word.ws English Dictionary

tap up

tap up verb: to make a specific approach to a person considered to be suitable for a professional position.

Verb

tap up (third-person singular simple present taps up, present participle tapping up, simple past and past participle tapped up)

  1. (UK, transitive) To make a specific approach to a person considered to be suitable for a professional position.
    • In earlier years, the intelligence services would often recruit agents by tapping them up.
  2. (UK, transitive) To make an approach to a player, under contract to another club, in order to attempt to negotiate a transfer.
    Synonyms:
    tamper

Synonyms of tap up

Forms of tap up

third-person singular presenttaps up
present participletapping up
past participletapped up
pasttapped up

Questions about tap up

What does tap up mean?
Tap up means to make a specific approach to a person considered to be suitable for a professional position.
What part of speech is tap up?
Tap up is a verb.
What is the past tense of tap up?
The past tense of tap up is tapped up.

Words near tap up in the dictionary

  1. tap out
  2. tap pants
  3. tap tap
  4. tap taps
  5. tap the admiral
  6. tap up
  7. tap water
  8. tap, rack, bang
  9. tap, rack, go
  10. tap-dance
  11. tap-dancer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tap 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: “tap up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tap_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.