Word.ws English Dictionary

took up arms

took up arms is the simple past of take up arms.

Meaning of take up arms

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.

Questions about took up arms

What is took up arms the simple past of?
Took up arms is the simple past of take up arms.

Words near took up arms in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: took up arms (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated:

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