end up

1. 1.

   finally be or do something

   “He ended up marrying his high school sweetheart”

   “he wound up being unemployed and living at home again”

   Synonymsfinish upland upfetch upwind upfinish

   Broaderact

Questions about end up

What does end up mean?

end up means "finally be or do something".

What is another word for end up?

Close synonyms include finish up, land up, fetch up, wind up, finish. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is end up a common word?

end up is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.