own up

1. Confess, make a full admission, as in Come on, Tim, you'd better own up that you lost the car keys. This idiom uses the verb own in the sense of “acknowledge.” [Colloquial; mid-1800s]

Example Sentences

Whether France can hold their own up front is another thing.

From BBC

What has made it fester is the belief that Japan has never fully owned up to its atrocities in places it occupied – not just China, but also Korea, what was then Malaya, Philippines, Indonesia.

From BBC

A series of myths keep white America from owning up about race, bias and ourselves.

From Los Angeles Times

Booker said Waltz “denied” and “deflected” rather than own up to his mistakes, something the New Jersey senator said is a “failure of leadership.”

From Salon

"I'd like to say to them, 'you guys haven't got the minerals to own up to what you did and I hope that sticks with you in prison'."

From BBC

Related Words

• accept 
• affirm 
• agree 
• allow 
• approve 
• concede 
• confirm 
• declare 
• disclose 
• grant 
• indicate 
• permit 
• recognize 
• reveal 
• talk 
• tell