wind 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 upend upfinish

   Broaderact
2. 2.

   give a preliminary swing to the arm pitching

   Broaderswing

   baseball

3. 3.

   stimulate sexually

   “This movie usually arouses the male audience”

   Synonymsarousesexexciteturn on

   Broaderstimulate

   Narrowertempt
4. 4.

   coil the spring of (some mechanical device) by turning a stem

   “wind your watch”

   Synonymswind

   Broadertighten

   Narrowerrewind

Questions about wind up

What does wind up mean?

wind up means "finally be or do something". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for wind up?

Close synonyms include finish up, land up, fetch up, end 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 wind up a common word?

wind up is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.