Word: set up Part of Speech: verb Pronunciation: /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ 1. To make ready for use. Labels: transitive Example: We set up the sprinkler. 2. To arrange logically. Labels: transitive Example: Set up my CD collection. 3. To cause to happen. Labels: transitive Example: Even a minor change can set up new bugs. Example: England's famous victory sets up a meeting with Sweden in Samara on Saturday 4. To trap or ensnare. Labels: transitive Example: I've got to set up that tasty rabbit. 5. To arrange for an outcome; to tamper or rig. Labels: transitive Example: The election was set up! 6. To prepare or get ready. Labels: intransitive Example: Used with an implied object obvious from context. Example: Give me a minute — I'm still setting up. 7. To gel or harden. Labels: intransitive Example: Give the cement 24 hours to set up before walking on it. 8. To level to rise in one part of a body of water, especially a shallow one, because of a storm surge caused by persistent wind. Labels: intransitive Example: The level set up at the south end of the lake after a day of north winds. 9. To provide the money or other support that someone needs for an important task or activity. Labels: transitive Example: Winning the lottery has set them up for life. Example: A good breakfast really sets you up for the day. 10. To establish someone in a business or position. Labels: transitive Example: After he left college, his father set him up in the family business. Example: She set herself up as an interior designer. 11. To trick or lure (someone) in order to entrap them. Labels: informal, transitive Example: They claimed that they weren't selling drugs, but that they'd been set up by the police. 12. To make (someone) proud or conceited (often in passive). Labels: transitive Example: M. Robespierre looked at me sideways and smiled and said to Madame, ‘You're a young lady after my own heart.’ This set her up for the day. 13. To matchmake; to arrange a date between two people. Labels: transitive 14. To create a goalscoring opportunity (for). Labels: transitive Example: Just past the hour Agbonlahor set up the second, crossing for Bent to net. Example: On 71.05, Portu brilliantly set up Yangel Herrera, only for Marc-André ter Stegen to make a sensational save. 15. To begin business or a scheme of life. Labels: dated, intransitive Example: to set up in trade; to set up for oneself 16. To profess openly; to make pretensions. Example: 1744 (first printed) Jonathan Swift, On the Testimony of Conscience those men who set up for morality without regard to religion, are generally virtuous but in part 17. To found; to start (a business, scheme) Labels: transitive Example: With the help of his wife Bilquis, he set up a maternal health clinic and a centre for abandoned children. 18. To deceive an opponent and capitalize on their reactions with a certain technique or maneuver. Example: When you make an opening you merely cause an opponent to uncover a target somewhere on his person. But when you set up an opponent, you knock him off balance with one punch so that he should be an open target for a following punch. Unless he's knocked off balance, he's not set up. Example: Writer Danny Wamboldt of Ring magazine said, "Only Willie knew how to set up his opponents masterfully and then move in." Wamboldt, a former New England bantamweight champion and current national president of the Veteran Boxers Association, said that one of Pep's opponents said of his dazzling speed: "It was the first time he had been surrounded by one man." 19. To cause to take flight; to flush into the air. Example: Edmund had enjoyed a good gallop over the downs, setting up the sandpipers[.] 20. Synonym of compose (To arrange (types) in a composing stick for printing; to typeset) Labels: obsolete