sign up

verb

"sign-up" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“sign 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
7
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To add a name to the list of people who are participating in something.

Corpus desk

Index EN-sign-up · sign up · English

sign up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 7 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "S" 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 sign up
PropertyValue
Headwordsign up
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters7
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “sign up” in English

sign upsits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

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

Rare enough to double-check

sign up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for sign up, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is sign up, spelled S-I-G-N- -U-P.

Definition

  1. 1
    To add a name to the list of people who are participating in something.
  2. 2
    To add one's own name to the list of people who are participating in something (including amateur, but not professional, teams).
  3. 3
    To agree to purchase some good or service.
  4. 4
    To enlist in the armed forces.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. We signed Bob up for kitchen cleanup duty.
  2. Coordinate term: sign in

This word in other languages

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 "sign up"?
"sign up" is spelled S-I-G-N- -U-P.
What does "sign up" mean?
As a verb, "sign up" means: To add a name to the list of people who are participating in something.
What language does "sign up" come from?
"sign 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list