stump up
"stump-up" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“stump 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 September 3, 2026) - To pay for something, often with reluctance.
Corpus desk
Index EN-stump-up · stump up · English
stump up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | stump up |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “stump up” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
stump up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To pay for something, often with reluctance.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for stump up in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our dataset records no confusable match here, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is stump up, spelled S-T-U-M-P- -U-P.
Definition
- 1To pay for something, often with reluctance.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how stump up appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Jim stumped up for the cinema tickets, but I paid for the coffees afterwards.
Not least because last spring, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that HM Treasury's new northern base would be in Darlington. If that doesn't encourage the Treasury to stump up cash to upgrade the town's station, then I fear nothing will.
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.
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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.