Word.ws English Dictionary

upfold

upfold verb: to fold up.

Verb

upfold (third-person singular simple present upfolds, present participle upfolding, simple past and past participle upfolded)

  1. (transitive) To fold up.
    • I lie on my side, head sunk in the pillow, legs upfolded, as if for Indian burial.2003, May Swenson, The Complete Love Poems of May Swenson, →ISBN, page 133
    • The two little boys in the picture wore short pants and short, wide double breasted jackets over white shirts with white upfolded collars and black bow ties that looked terribly uncomfortable judging by the grimace on the chubby faces.2014, Cassie Merko, Roots - A Life in Review, →ISBN
  2. (intransitive) To create a raised fold.
    • A groove in the cortex is called a fissure or a sulcus, and the upfolded tissue between two sulci is a gyrus.2012, Michael A. Arbib, How the Brain Got Language: The Mirror System Hypothesis, →ISBN, page 91
    • Thus the Pentland Hills form an anticline of Upper Silurian Rocks (shales and grits), over which the Carboniferous Rocks were upfolded.2012, Alex McCallum, Midlothian, →ISBN, page 26
  3. (intransitive, rare, transitive) To come together in order to form a whole
    • It was the merciless upfolding of that glorious transfiguration pageant, in which the corruptible was seen putting on incorruption, and the mortal clothing itself with immortality.1869, The Church Seasons Historically and Poetically Illustrated, page 480
    • It is the life essence of true womanhood, existing potentially in the child, upfolding with other elements of character until it becomes the softening and ennobling spirit of the adult woman.1899, Annual Report of the State Superintendent for the School Year

Noun

upfold (plural upfolds)

  1. An anticline.
    • In young mountains, upfolds (anticlines) form ridges and downfolds (synclines) form valleys.2006, Peter L. Kresan, Reed Mencke, Understanding Earth Student Study Guide

Proper noun capitalized: Upfold

Upfold

  1. A surname.

Examples of upfold in a sentence

  • The key to upfolding the mass campaign to study and apply the new party Constitution lies in the members of leading groups at all levels taking the lead in studying and applying […]1970, United States. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: People's Republic of China, numbers 105-126:
  • […] and encouraged by the three great banners of the general line, the big leap forward and the people's commune, they upfolded a great revolution in education in 1958.1977, Daily Report: People's Republic of China, numbers 231-240, United States: Foreign Broadcast Information Service:

Forms of upfold

Verb
third-person singular presentupfolds
present participleupfolding
past participleupfolded
pastupfolded
Noun
pluralupfolds

Origin of upfold

From up- + fold.

Questions about upfold

What does upfold mean?
Upfold means to fold up.
How do you use upfold in a sentence?
The key to upfolding the mass campaign to study and apply the new party Constitution lies in the members of leading groups at all levels taking the lead in studying and applying […]
What part of speech is upfold?
Upfold can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
What is the past tense of upfold?
The past tense of upfold is upfolded.

Words near upfold in the dictionary

  1. upflows
  2. upflung
  3. upflux
  4. upfly
  5. upflying
  6. upfold
  7. upfolded
  8. upfolding
  9. upfoldings
  10. upfolds
  11. upforce

Source and license

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