grow up
— phrasal verb with grow uk/ɡrəʊ/us/ɡroʊ/verb grew, grown
(PERSON)
A2 to gradually become an adult:
I grew up in Scotland (= I lived there when I was young).
Taking responsibility for yourself is part of the process of growing up.
More examples
- Linda Chan was born in Hong Kong but grew up in New York and quickly became Americanized.
- He immigrated with his parents in 1895, and grew up in Long Island.
- What do you want to be when you grow up?
- She wants to be a doctor when she grows up.
- He's grown up quickly since going to secondary school.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Young people
- adolescence
- adolescent
- boyhood
- delinquent
- emo
- girlhood
- grow
- mall rat
- minor
- punk
- skinhead
- Teddy boy
- teen
- teens
- tweenager
- yoof
- young blood
- young lady/man idiom
- youngster
- yute
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(CITY)
If a town or city grows up in a particular place or way, it develops there or in that way:
The city grew up originally as a crossing point on the river.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Becoming bigger
- accrue
- augment
- billow
- bloat
- broaden
- engorged
- enlarge
- enlargement
- expansion
- extend
- extension
- grow
- oak
- regenerate
- scalability
- scalable
- scaleable
- shoot
- stretch
- supersize
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