Word.ws English Dictionary

tuned up

tuned up is the simple past and past participle of tune up.

Meaning of tune up

Verb

tune up (third-person singular simple present tunes up, present participle tuning up, simple past and past participle tuned up)

  1. (transitive) To make adjustments (to an engine or bicycle drivetrain) in order to improve its performance.
    Synonyms:
    soup up
  2. (intransitive) To make preparations for vigorous exercise; to warm up.
  3. (intransitive) To begin to sing or play music.
  4. (intransitive) To tune one's instrument in preparation for performance.
    • By this time the theatre had practically filled and the orchestra was tuning up for the overture.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC
  5. (US, idiomatic, transitive) To beat up (someone).
    • “We finally stopped roustin' him and decided to tune him up instead, every chance we got.”
      “Tune him up?”
      “Yeah, that's an expression for beatin' the living dog shit outta somebody.”2007, Michael Berish, Reflections from the Pit, →ISBN

Questions about tuned up

What is tuned up the simple past and past participle of?
Tuned up is the simple past and past participle of tune up.

Words near tuned up in the dictionary

  1. tuned down
  2. tuned in
  3. tuned mass damper
  4. tuned mass dampers
  5. tuned out
  6. tuned up
  7. tuneful
  8. tunefully
  9. tunefulness
  10. tuneless
  11. tunelessly

Source and license

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