get up to

English

Verb

get up to (third-person singular simple present gets up to, present participle getting up to, simple past got up to, past participle (UK) got up to or (US) gotten up to)

1. To do something, especially something that is forbidden or improper.

   Recently he's been getting up to all sorts of mischief.

   I haven't seen you for a while. What have you been getting up to?

   • 2014 March 9, Elizabeth Day, quoting Mary-Kay Wilmers, “Is the LRB the best magazine in the world?”, in The Observer‎^[1]:

     The windows on one side of the large open-plan room overlook the nurses' accommodation for the nearby University College Hospital […] The LRB's editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers, likes this view. She enjoys "seeing what the nurses get up to".

Translations

to do something, especially something that you should not do

• Catalan: cométrer
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 幹／干 (zh) (gàn), 做 (zh) (zuò), 搞出 (gǎochū), 弄出 (nòngchū)

• Finnish: ryhtyä (fi), touhuta (fi)
• French: commettre (fr)
• Galician: cometer (gl)
• German: begehen (de)
• Italian: commettere (it)
• Polish: kombinować (pl) impf
• Russian: вытворя́ть (ru) impf (vytvorjátʹ), вы́творить (ru) pf (výtvoritʹ)
• Spanish: cometer (es)

See also

• up to

Further reading

• “get up to”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.