wind up1
informal
1Arrive or end up in a specified state, situation, or place: she wound up in hospital with pneumonia...
- And, if you don't want to wind up in that situation, you need to pack heat and be prepared to resist at the point of abduction.
- We all wind up in your situation sooner or later, and I agree - it's tough.
- Shaking his head in disbelief, he wondered how he'd come to wind up in this situation to begin with.
Synonyms
end up, finish up, find oneself, land up, land oneself
informal fetch up
2 another way of saying wind something up (sense 2. he wound up by attacking Nonconformists...
- It looks like this job will wind up soon - the company could well fold in the next month or so.
See parent entry: wind
wind-up2
/ˈwʌɪndʌp
/noun
1British informal An attempt to tease or irritate someone: surely this was a wind-up...
- I'm sure Sergen meant well and simply wanted to share his pleasure with the widest possible audience, yet there is a dark interpretation of these events: namely, that the Besiktas players were attempting some kind of wind-up.
- Kerry will be presenting a show of wind-ups and pranks.
- The build-up has the atmosphere of a phoney war as the rivals perfect the various practical jokes and wind-ups that will help unsettle their enemy's preparations.
2An act of concluding or finishing something: a company wind-up...
- In his opinion, the wind-ups are the result of Bulgaria's pending EU accession.
- The July wind-up coincides with the launch by Eircell of the country's first controlled pilot project on the recycling of disused mobile phones, batteries and chargers.
- All summer long the tour had traversed the county and played 22 times on Kerry courses and this was the wind-up.
3 Baseball The motions of a pitcher preparing to pitch the ball.Even Tiant's repertoire of pace-changing wind-ups did little to confuse the Reds' batters....
- This hurler has cultivated an elaborate windup.
- The 28-year-old Burnett, whose across-the-body delivery has concerned scouts for years, tinkered with a new windup this spring before going back to his old motion.