cheer up

verb

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

"cheer-up" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“cheer up” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
8
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To become happier or less downcast.

Key facts for cheer up
PropertyValue
Headwordcheer up
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters8
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Where “cheer up” sits in English frequency

cheer up falls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

cheer up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for cheer up, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is cheer up, spelled C-H-E-E-R- -U-P.

Definition

  1. 1
    To become happier or less downcast.
  2. 2
    To make someone happier or less downcast.

This word in other languages

animarse(Español)aufheitern(Deutsch)animar(Português)

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "cheer up"?
"cheer up" is spelled C-H-E-E-R- -U-P.
What does "cheer up" mean?
As a verb, "cheer up" means: To become happier or less downcast.
What language does "cheer up" come from?
"cheer up" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Using “cheer up”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct English spelling is C-H-E-E-R- -U-P - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source

Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list FrequencyWords open word-frequency list