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Glite Dictionary
💵 To provide money 🥊 To resist 🏗️ To build 📢 To display 🛏️ To give shelter 🏷️ To offer for sale 🗳️ To nominate 🍑 To preserve food
to put up

to put up

4 5.6
Store fruit in jars or cans to eat later
  • phrasal verb
  • /pʊt ʌp/
translation icon : conservar (en frascos)
  • Not too long before that, I had put up a big batch of mead (honey wine) that I'd made myself.
  • put up preserves
  • put up in jars
  • put up tomatoes

Examples

  • I can go to the gym or take a shower or put up some peach-ginger preserves and let my subconscious do its thing without feeling guilty that yes, sometimes that's just the process.

    Blog text (1)

  • Every fall, my family puts up a variety of vegetables from our garden.

  • I still have squash, pumpkin, and sweet potato waiting for me to put them up.

    Blog text (18)

  • "Harvest the potatoes, pickle the cabbage, put up jam," Laima nods in agreement.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Last summer, we put up jars of fresh strawberries to enjoy in the winter.

  • He usually puts up homemade pickles and jams every year.

Synonyms

to can
vsto put up
89 4.2

To put food into a sealed metal container so it lasts longer

preserves without focusing on the heating or sterilizing step
to tin
vsto put up
  • UK
4.9

To preserve food by putting it into a sealed metal can

saves fruit or vegetables for later home use in sealed containers

Antonyms

to consume
172 3.2

To use up resources until none are left

How Long

to preserve
65 3.2
to put up
4 5.6
to bottle
37 1.6
to store
463 1.0

Surface Forms

put up infinitive
putting up present participle
puts up third person singular
put up past
put up past participle

Morphology

put + up

The verbs 'put' (place) and particle 'up' (away/upward) give a loose, compositional sense of placing something away, which can suggest storing or keeping. However, the specific meaning 'preserve food in a can/tin' is a specialized, conventionalized extension (and somewhat dialectal) that is not fully predictable from the parts, so it is only partially transparent to learners.

Etymology

Put up (to preserve food) comes from the old custom of putting jars of fruit and vegetables up on shelves or in a cellar to keep them for winter. That's why 'put up' came to mean 'preserve food in jars or tins'.