follow up

verb

"follow-up" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“follow 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
9
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To take further actions remaining after an event; to continue, revisit, or persist; especially, to maintain communication or verify.

Corpus desk

Index EN-follow-up · follow up · English

follow up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 9 letters
  • VOW-3 3 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "F" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for follow up
PropertyValue
Headwordfollow up
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “follow up” in English

follow upranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

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

Rare enough to double-check

follow up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To take further actions remaining after an event; to continue, revisit, or persist; especially, to maintain communication or verify.".

follow up doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.

No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is follow up, spelled F-O-L-L-O-W- -U-P.

Definition

  1. 1
    To take further actions remaining after an event; to continue, revisit, or persist; especially, to maintain communication or verify.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how follow up appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Send a letter, then follow up promptly with a telephone call.
  2. With the hosts not able to find their passes - everything that went forward was too heavy or too short - Terry once again had to come to his side's rescue after Davies had brilliantly nodded into the path of Elmander, who followed up swiftly with a deflected shot.

Synonyms

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 "follow up"?
"follow up" is spelled F-O-L-L-O-W- -U-P.
What does "follow up" mean?
As a verb, "follow up" means: To take further actions remaining after an event; to continue, revisit, or persist; especially, to maintain communication or verify.
What language does "follow up" come from?
"follow up" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list