upsurge
Americanverb (used without object)
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upsurges,
present (3rd person singular)
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upsurged,
past participle, past
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upsurging
present participle
noun
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
upsurgesimple
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upsurgessimple
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have upsurgedperfect
-
has upsurgedperfect
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am upsurgingprogressive
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are upsurgingprogressive
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is upsurgingprogressive
-
have been upsurgingperfect progressive
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has been upsurgingperfect progressive
Past
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upsurgedsimple
-
had upsurgedperfect
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was upsurgingprogressive
-
were upsurgingprogressive
-
had been upsurgingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of upsurge
Explanation
An upsurge is when there's a sudden rise of something's strength or size. Hordes of people walking around your town with cameras might be due to an upsurge in tourism, for example. News shows often announce that there's an upsurge of crime or an upsurge of available jobs in public education. The noun upsurge is most often used in this figurative way, rather than to talk about something literally surging up, like stormy waves. These are more likely to be described as a surge, which is actually the root of upsurge — a surge is a "high, rolling swell of water," from the Latin surgere, "to rise."
Vocabulary lists containing upsurge
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The economy experienced a brief upsurge in hiring in the first four months of 2026 before it petered out.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 29, 2026
France is at the heart of the current upsurge, with the country having just experienced its hottest spring since records began in 1900.
From Barron's ● Jun. 19, 2026
These days, the upsurge in streaming television and its hunger for content has made books an even more ubiquitous source of intellectual property for the small screen.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 10, 2026
Fractile joins hardware startups that have been racing to bring products to market and strike deals with major customers as agentic AI provokes an upsurge in computing demand.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026
Then she relaxed into the tremendous upsurge as huge torrents of water heaved her toward the surface.
From "Shadowshaper" by Daniel José Older
There have been previous upsurges of mass protest.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2025
Analysts at BoFA Global Research cautioned that past instances when the S&P has gone long without a 5% pullback ended with upsurges of volatility in August 2015 and February 2018.
From Reuters ● Aug. 17, 2021
After that, anomie set in, broken now and then by upsurges in talk of further manned voyages to the moon and a new quest to place astronauts on Mars.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2021
Parkview’s Dr. Jason Row said recent upsurges in cases and hospitalizations at his facilities seem to mirror some dropped caution as stay-at-home rules are relaxed.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 23, 2020
More recently, many of these troops have been redeployed back to Burundi to deal with periodic upsurges in rebel activity.
From The 2002 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency
That's certainly what I think happened with Ariel – her whole trauma, her father's death upsurged.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 18, 2013
In the same way, all retailers and many manufacturers were being squeezed by upsurging commodity prices.
From Time Magazine Archive
To hold the opinion that this upsurging of peoples can be met by proletarian-democratic compromises is childish.
From Time Magazine Archive
And it was true, I could feel, just as I dreamed, the upsurging of the feeling, brimming over, boiling up, brimming over.
From The Brimming Cup by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
The play of water evokes a melody of line and the result is a sense of upsurging joy.
From The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry by W. G. Archer
It was followed by an upsurging wave from the ocean, which added to the fear of the people, but which receded slowly and with little damage.
From Plotting in Pirate Seas by C. A. (Charles A.) Federer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
