take up arms

1. 1.

   commence hostilities

   Synonymsgo to wartake arms

   Broaderwar

Questions about take up arms

What does take up arms mean?

take up arms means "commence hostilities".

What is another word for take up arms?

Close synonyms include go to war, take arms. 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 take up arms a common word?

take up arms is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.