Synonyms

buck up

British

verb

to make or cause to make haste
to make or become more cheerful, confident, etc

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

buck up Idioms

Cheer up, become encouraged, as in Buck up! We'll soon have it done, or Even the promise of a vacation did not buck her up. This term was first recorded in 1844.

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:

buck up

Bernard DeVoto once tried to buck up his friend Catherine Drinker Bowen, who was wavering between a career in history and one in music.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

The pair were told to buck up their ideas by the referee as they began talking to each other during the middle of the rounds.

From BBC ● Apr. 26, 2025

That said, telling voters to buck up and realize how good they have it would also be a bad move.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 4, 2024

Still, the more you observe these corporate leaders who ax swaths of employees and tell the survivors to buck up, the more you realize how eerily they’re all taking after Musk specifically.

From Slate ● Sep. 14, 2023

Somehow, the sight of those stoic palace guards made her buck up a bit, with their imperturbable faces and brave fur hats.

From "The Hidden Gallery" by Maryrose Wood

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023