GROW UP

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does grow up mean? 

• GROW UP (verb)
  The verb GROW UP has 1 sense:

1. become an adult

  Familiarity information: GROW UP used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GROW UP (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Become an adult

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "grow up" is one way to...):

grow; maturate; mature (develop and reach maturity; undergo maturation)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "grow up"):

come of age (reach a certain age that marks a transition to maturity)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s

Sentence example:

Sam and Sue grow up

 Context examples 

"If that's the way he's going to grow up, I wish he'd stay a boy," she thought, with a curious sense of disappointment and discomfort, trying meantime to seem quite easy and gay.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But I have always observed, that they who are good-natured when children, are good-natured when they grow up; and he was always the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the world.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

“Our little friends grow up around us. They grow out of our knowledge, ma'am?”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Martin Eden, I am afraid, will never grow up.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It can grow up to 9 m tall, and has large, simple, dark green, shiny and deeply veined leaves.

(Morinda citrifolia, NCI Thesaurus)

With treatment, most boys grow up to have normal lives.

(Klinefelter's Syndrome, NIH: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development)

Saturn makes us grow up and take on responsibilities that only a few years earlier would have been beyond our ability to muster.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Little Emma, grow up a better woman than your aunt.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

A niece of ours, Sir Thomas, I may say, or at least of yours, would not grow up in this neighbourhood without many advantages.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

After dinner Mr. Hawkins said:—'My dears, I want to drink your health and prosperity; and may every blessing attend you both. I know you both from children, and have, with love and pride, seen you grow up. Now I want you to make your home here with me. I have left to me neither chick nor child; all are gone, and in my will I have left you everything.'

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)