round up

British  

verb

1. to gather (animals, suspects, etc) together

   to round ponies up

2. to raise (a number) to the nearest whole number or ten, hundred, or thousand above it Compare round down

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noun

1. the act of gathering together livestock, esp cattle, so that they may be branded, counted, or sold

2. any similar act of collecting or bringing together

   a roundup of today's news

3. a collection of suspects or criminals by the police, esp in a raid

round up Idioms  

1. Collect or gather in a body, as in We'll have to round up some more volunteers for the food drive, or The police rounded up all the suspects. This term comes from the West, where since the mid-1800s it has been used for collecting livestock by riding around the herd and driving the animals together. By about 1875 it was extended to other kinds of gathering together.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

round up

Police and troops round up hundreds of people who remained after tens of thousands surged from Morocco into Ceuta.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026

Such missives resembled the way royal press officers would round up a day of engagements on a royal tour, except these were with language free of convention and formality.

From BBC ● Apr. 18, 2026

That provision was offered because Warner board members have expressed concerns that Paramount may not be able to round up sufficient financing to close such a gargantuan deal.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 25, 2026

A core of Minneapolis activists is playing a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with the federal agents deployed in force to the midwestern city to round up undocumented immigrants.

From Barron's ● Jan. 28, 2026

Election time was nearing and a Negro Republican precinct captain asked me to help him round up votes.

From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright

Related Words

• bring in
• bring together
• herd