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Glite Dictionary
🗣️ To inform 👤 To substitute 📝 To complete forms 🎨 To shade artwork
to fill in

to fill in

145 2.8
Tell someone what happened when they were not there
  • phrasal verb
  • /fɪl ɪn/
  • Informal
: poner al tanto de
  • Mike filled me in on the details.
  • fill in the gaps
  • fill in the details

Because I need you to help me fill in my knowledge gaps, right?

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Examples

  • Is this, like, can you fill us in on what was said behind the open door?

  • Nellie, whose father was on the council, filled me in on every detail of the meeting.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • But yeah, I just kind of wanted to tell you guys and fill you in on that.

  • So I just wanted to fill you in on that.

  • I'll fill you in on the rest later.

    Jack Ensch: Hanoi Hilton POW (2016)

  • I'll fill you in later.

    Hook (1991)

  • Thank you for filling me in.

    Ghosted (2023)

  • " Mr. Adler, could you fill us in on what happened on your trip? "

    Fiction book (1991)

  • Why don't you fill him in on what's been going on?

    Cover-Up (1991)

  • Can you fill in the team about the latest developments in the project?

Antonyms

to withhold
210 5.1

Refuse to give something someone wants or needs

How Informed

to inform
∞ 1.0
to fill in
  • Informal
145 2.8
to tell
∞ 1.0
to mention
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

fill in infinitive
filled in past
filled in past participle
filling in present participle
fills in third person singular

Morphology

fill + in

The sense of adding shading is a literal instantiation of 'fill' (to make something full by adding contents) combined with 'in' (into/inside), so the meaning of putting color or lines into areas is directly derivable from the constituents. This is a common, compositional phrasal-verb pattern and is cross-linguistically transparent, so a B1 learner who knows both words would likely understand it.

Etymology

Fill in for information comes from the idea of filling the empty parts of a story or a conversation; you put facts into the missing spaces to make the story whole. That's why to 'fill in' someone means 'to give someone the necessary or recent information'.