to put hands up

8 2.7

Raise your hands to show you are not dangerous

phrasal verb

: levantar las manos

In a moment of panic, the suspect decided to put his hands up to show he meant no harm.
put your hands up in the air
put your hands up and step away

Examples

"Hello, my angel," Charlie said to baby Francie, and she put her hands up to him to be taken out of the chair.

Fiction book (1999)
As Vanessa turns around, she puts her hands up and pulls off her face, revealing wires, transistors, and a speaker where her mouth should be.

Fiction book (1999)
The Rent-a-Guard puts his hands up, sidles across the hallway as they tear into the barricade. INT. SATELLITE ROOM - CONTINUOUS Lisa reads to Milo.

Fiction book (2001)
When the police arrived, he raised his hands to surrender and put his hands up.
As soon as the gunman entered the room, everyone was told to put their hands up.

Synonyms

to throw up one's hands

vsto put hands up

Informal

15 6.5

Raise both hands to show you feel frustrated or give up

indicates surrender or non-threat rather than emotional frustration

Antonyms

attack

∞ 1.4

A violent action that harms people or damages things

How Compliant

surrender

77 4.2

to put hands up

8 2.7

to comply

332 3.8

Surface Forms

put hands up infinitive

put hands up past

put hands up past participle

putting hands up present participle

puts hands up third person singular

Morphology

put + hand + up

The meaning 'to raise one's hands' is directly and predictably composed from 'put' (place), 'hands' (the body parts), and 'up' (to a higher position). This motion/placement construction is cross-linguistically common and the additional pragmatic sense of surrender is inferable from context, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would understand the MWE.

Etymology

Put hands up comes from the simple image of lifting your hands up so people can see you hold nothing. That's why it means 'to surrender' or 'to show you are not a threat'.