Uprising

How to spell uprising

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce uprising

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does uprising mean?

1. nounAn act of resistance or rebellion against a government or authority.

Uprising in a sentence

• The failed uprising left the old regime even more determined to crush dissent.

• Historians still debate what triggered the peasant uprising of that century.

Where does uprising come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English formation built from the everyday verb 'rise' and the directional adverb 'up'. The verb 'rise' descends from Old English 'risan', meaning 'to get up' or 'to move upward', a word shared with the wider Germanic family and a cousin of words like 'raise' and 'arise'. Pairing it with 'up' gave the literal idea of getting up out of a seated or lying position, and from there the figurative sense of people rising up against authority. The political meaning of a revolt or insurrection became established in English by the 1500s, when 'uprising' settled into its modern shape. Because both halves are plain English words, the spelling is regular: 'up' plus 'rising', with the single 's' of 'rise' kept intact.

How the word is built

• up- (upward)
• rise (to get up, ascend)
• -ing (noun suffix marking the action)