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Glite Dictionary
🎯 To end up ✅ To finish ⌚ To coil or tighten ⚾ To prepare to throw
to wind up

to wind up

4 5.0
Move the throwing arm in a circle before throwing the ball
  • phrasal verb
  • /wɪnd ʌp/
translation icon : armar el brazo
  • Angel Macias studies the sign, winds up and delivers the first pitch of the 1957 Championship.
  • winds up and throws
  • pitcher winds up
  • wound up her arm

Examples

  • Silence is where you go when you're out on the mound and you wind up to make the perfect pitch.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • Suddenly, I wind up and pitch the ball as hard as I can right against the side of the car.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Wind up for the pitch.

    The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018)

  • Then she wound up her arm as if she were a baseball pitcher.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • He winds up, the pitch!

    Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)

  • He is about to wound up and throw the ball to his teammate.

  • As the pitcher winds up, the batter prepares for the incoming pitch.

  • The coach shouted at the player to wind up faster before making the throw.

How Big

to wind up
4 5.0
arm throw
1 2.8
underarm
  • UK
3 3.1

Surface Forms

wind up infinitive
winding up present participle
winds up third person singular
wound up past
wound up past participle

Morphology

wind + up

The sense 'to bring to an end' is partially derivable because the particle 'up' commonly marks completion and many verb + up combinations mean 'finish', so a learner familiar with that pattern may infer the meaning. However, 'wind' does not literally mean 'finish' and the specific phrasal-verb reading is a metaphorical extension that is not fully predictable from the constituents alone, so prior exposure or knowledge of the construction is usually needed.

Etymology

Wind up in sports comes from turning your arm back in a wide circle before you throw, like winding a spring to get power. So wind up means 'to move your arm in a circular way to prepare a throw'.