shut up

Formsshuts up, shutting up, shut up

1. 1
   go quietphrasal verbderogatorytransitive or intransitiveimperative

   To stop talking, arguing, or making noise, or to make a person or thing stop; often used rudely as a command.

   My neighbor's car alarm wouldn't shut up until nearly three in the morning.

   The senator tried to shut up his critics by threatening to sue them.

   Similarhush, shush, quieten

   Note

   The verb works both ways: a person or a car alarm shuts up, or someone shuts them up, and a pronoun object goes in the middle (managed to shut him up). Harry S. Truman uses it in 1965 of senators he could hardly get to shut up. Even outside commands it is disparaging about the talk being stopped.

2. 2
   rude orderinterjection

   A highly impolite command telling someone to stop talking, arguing, crying, or making a fuss.

   "Shut up! Nobody asked for your opinion."

   "Oh, shut up. You have no idea what you're talking about."

   Similarshh, shush, silence

3. 3
   no wayinterjectioncolloquial

   Used to express disbelief or amazement at something surprising.

   "She's moving to Paris next month." "Shut up! Since when?"

   "I ran into your old roommate at the airport." "Shut up! In Denver?"

   Similarno, never

   Note

   The words of the rude command turn friendly here: the reply greets news with delighted disbelief and asks for more. It is often doubled or followed by really?, as when Regina George says Shut up! Shut up! in Tina Fey's Mean Girls (2004), and shut the front door is a playful stand-in.

4. 4
   lock awayphrasal verbtransitive

   To confine someone or something inside a closed, secure place like a room, box, or pen.

   Zookeepers shut up the big cats in their night enclosures at dusk.

   The old letters had been shut up in a trunk in the attic for decades.

   Similarconfine, lock, enclose, pen, cage

   Oppositerelease

   Note

   With a reflexive pronoun it describes someone closing themselves away: in Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), the servant Poole frets that the doctor shuts himself up in his cabinet. The passive, be shut up in, covers both that choice and confinement against one's will, as in a prince shut up in a dungeon.

5. 5
   close a buildingphrasal verbtransitive

   To close up a building and secure it against anyone entering.

   The owners decided to shut up the old hotel for the winter.

   After the last guests left, the caretaker shut up the house and drove back to the city.

   Similarclose, lock, secure

   Oppositeopen, reopen

6. 6
   close for goodphrasal verbtransitive

   To end a business and stop it from operating.

   The company plans to shut up its last factory in the region next year.

   When sales collapsed, the partners shut up the restaurant and sold the equipment.

   Similarend, terminate

   Oppositestart (entry), establish

7. 7
   adjective

   Closed up or off, as a building is when no one is meant to enter it.

   By October the seaside cottages were all shut up, their windows boarded against the storms.

   The old mill stands shut up and silent at the edge of town.

   Similarclosed, locked

   Oppositeopen

   Note

   After a verb it stays open, as in the house was all shut up; before a noun it takes a hyphen, and it can be graded: Mary Aplin Sprague's An Earnest Trifler (1880) calls Beaudeck a very shut-up place, and the comparative is more shut up.

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