Put up means to hang or build something: put up a poster, a shelf, a tent. The second common meaning is to let someone stay at your home for the night: Can you put me up for the night? In both meanings, a pronoun goes in the middle: put it up, put me up.
Want to use put up in conversation?
Write a sentence — we'll show the mistakes right away and suggest how to say it more naturally.
The check is taking longer than usual. Your feedback will appear here automatically.
put up + noun (poster/shelf/tent); put + noun/it + up; put + person + up (for the night); put up with + noun
- We put up the tent before it got dark and then made a fire.
- My aunt put me up for a week when I first moved to London.
- The school put up posters about the new English club in every corridor.
What changed
First versionI bought a new shelf last week, but I still haven't put up it.
RevisionI bought a new shelf last week, but I still haven't put it up.
When the object is a pronoun (it, them, me), it goes between put and up: put it up, put them up. With an ordinary noun, both word orders work: put up the shelf and put the shelf up. Putting the pronoun at the end, as in put up it, is a common mistake. Only the word order changed.
Put up with is a completely different verb: to tolerate something, to accept it without complaining. I can't put up with the noise any more. Just adding with changes the meaning: put up the neighbours means to let the neighbours stay with you, while put up with the neighbours means to tolerate them.
Your turn
The hotels were all full, so a friend offered to ___ for two nights in his flat.
Show the answer
put me up — The friend is offering to let the person stay for two nights, which is put someone up. The pronoun me goes between put and up, so put me up; put up me is incorrect.
Write about moving house or redecorating. Say what you put up or installed and in which room.
After we moved into the new flat, I put up two bookshelves in the living room.
Learn to use new words without mistakes
Write phrases with the words you are learning. LetsWords shows mistakes in usage and grammar, suggests corrections and explains them, and review helps the words stick.