Word.ws English Dictionary

toughen up

toughen up verb: to make or become mentally tougher.

Verb

toughen up (third-person singular simple present toughens up, present participle toughening up, simple past and past participle toughened up)

  1. (ambitransitive, idiomatic) To make or become mentally tougher.

Forms of toughen up

third-person singular presenttoughens up
present participletoughening up
past participletoughened up
pasttoughened up

Questions about toughen up

What does toughen up mean?
Toughen up means to make or become mentally tougher.
What part of speech is toughen up?
Toughen up is a verb.
What is the past tense of toughen up?
The past tense of toughen up is toughened up.

Words near toughen up in the dictionary

  1. tough-skinned
  2. toughed
  3. toughed it out
  4. toughed out
  5. toughen
  6. toughen up
  7. toughenable
  8. toughened
  9. toughened up
  10. toughener
  11. tougheners

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: toughen 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-toughen up.ogg.

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