Get up to means to be doing something, often something a bit suspicious, mischievous, or simply unknown to the speaker: What have you been getting up to? It's used to ask, with curiosity, about someone's activities, or to talk about mischief: get up to mischief.
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get up to + mischief/no good/something; what + subject + get up to
- The kids have been suspiciously quiet — I wonder what they're getting up to in the garden.
- What did you get up to over the weekend?
- Teenagers sometimes get up to mischief when their parents are away.
What changed
First versionWhat did you get up during the holidays?
RevisionWhat did you get up to during the holidays?
Get up is such a familiar phrase for 'wake up, get out of bed' that the particle to after up often gets dropped by mistake. But to ask what someone has been doing, rather than when they woke up, you need the full phrase: get up to.
Get up to something means to be doing something, usually with a hint of curiosity or mischief, while plain get up means to physically get out of bed or a chair: I get up at seven every morning.
Your turn
It's been ages! What have you been ___ lately?
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getting up to — It's been ages! signals that the speaker hasn't seen the other person for a while and wants to know what they've been doing: What have you been getting up to? Getting up just means 'getting out of bed', and it doesn't pair naturally with what in this kind of question — you'd ask about waking up with something like What time have you been getting up?
Ask a friend what they've been doing lately, or write about what someone has been doing — over the holidays, at the weekend or during some other period. Name the period.
I haven't seen my cousin in months, so I texted her to ask what she'd been getting up to since she moved to Berlin.
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