buck up

verb

bucked up; bucking up; bucks up

intransitive verb

: to become encouraged : brace up

transitive verb

1

: improve, smarten

2

: to raise the morale of

Synonyms

• brighten
• cheer (up)
• lighten
• look up
• perk (up)

Examples of buck up in a Sentence

buck up, kids, it's not so bad as you're making it out to be

a surprise presidential visit to buck up the troops

Recent Examples on the Web

Still others buck up the recipe with spirits—so many bartenders have reflexively added vodka that many mistakenly believe that vodka is part of the original recipe. —Jason O'Bryan, Robb Report, 26 Oct. 2024

An Amazon search currently shows me options from seven bucks up to a hundred. —New Atlas, 2 Oct. 2024

Gandalf uses it to help buck up the fellowship ferrying the ring through Middle-earth and, later, the men defending the city of Gondor. —Eliana Dockterman, TIME, 12 Sep. 2024

And his stealth war pronouncements aimed to buck up his rule-of-law bona fides and to give him breathing room to meet the threat for three more years, running out the clock on his national security responsibilities and passing to his successor the quandary of how to legitimize permanent secret war. —Jack Goldsmith, Foreign Affairs, 23 May 2013

Word History

Etymology

buck entry 2

First Known Use

1844, in the meaning defined at intransitive sense