fess up

1. 1.

   admit or acknowledge a wrongdoing or error

   “the writer of the anonymous letter owned up after they identified his handwriting”

   Synonymsmake a clean breast ofown up

   Broaderconcede

Questions about fess up

What does fess up mean?

fess up means "admit or acknowledge a wrongdoing or error".

What is another word for fess up?

Close synonyms include make a clean breast of, own up. 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 fess up a common word?

fess 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.