Word.ws English Dictionary

work up to

work up to verb: to reach by gradual effort or developments.

Verb

work up to (third-person singular simple present works up to, present participle working up to, simple past and past participle worked up to)

  1. To reach by gradual effort or developments.
    • Her boyfriend worked up to a marriage proposal.

Forms of work up to

third-person singular presentworks up to
present participleworking up to
past participleworked up to
pastworked up to

Questions about work up to

What does work up to mean?
Work up to means to reach by gradual effort or developments.
What part of speech is work up to?
Work up to is a verb.
What is the past tense of work up to?
The past tense of work up to is worked up to.

Words near work up to in the dictionary

  1. work triangle
  2. work triangles
  3. work unit
  4. work units
  5. work up
  6. work up to
  7. work week
  8. work weeks
  9. work wife
  10. work with one's hands
  11. work wives

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: work up to (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: “work up to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/work_up_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.