Word.ws English Dictionary

waiting up

waiting up is the present participle and gerund of wait up.

Meaning of wait up

Verb

wait up (third-person singular simple present waits up, present participle waiting up, simple past and past participle waited up)

  1. To stay awake waiting for somebody to return.
    • Anyway, Dad waited up for them. It must have been about midnight when they came in.1980, Joe Garner, Never Fly Over an Eagle's Nest, page 66
  2. (US, colloquial, often) To wait.
    • Hey, wait up! I forgot my umbrella.

Questions about waiting up

What is waiting up the present participle and gerund of?
Waiting up is the present participle and gerund of wait up.

Words near waiting up in the dictionary

  1. waiting staffs
  2. waiting till the clouds roll by
  3. waiting time
  4. waiting times
  5. waiting to happen
  6. waiting up
  7. waiting upon
  8. waiting upon hand and foot
  9. waiting-room
  10. waiting-rooms
  11. waitingly

Source and license

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