Word.ws English Dictionary

turtle up

turtle up verb: to be defensive or hypervigilant; to adopt a defensive posture; to avoid conflict.

Verb

turtle up (third-person singular simple present turtles up, present participle turtling up, simple past and past participle turtled up)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To be defensive or hypervigilant; to adopt a defensive posture; to avoid conflict

Forms of turtle up

third-person singular presentturtles up
present participleturtling up
past participleturtled up
pastturtled up

Questions about turtle up

What does turtle up mean?
Turtle up means to be defensive or hypervigilant; to adopt a defensive posture; to avoid conflict.
What part of speech is turtle up?
Turtle up is a verb.
What is the past tense of turtle up?
The past tense of turtle up is turtled up.

Words near turtle up in the dictionary

  1. turtle suits
  2. turtle trade
  3. turtle trades
  4. turtle trading
  5. turtle tradings
  6. turtle up
  7. turtle vine
  8. turtle vines
  9. turtle-back
  10. turtle-backs
  11. turtle-corral

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turtle 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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