trip up

phrasal verb

tripped up; tripping up; trips up

: to cause (someone) to make a mistake

He tried to trip up the cashier as she counted his change.

Examples of trip up in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web In their view, the potential upside of watching your opponent melt down is greater than the risk of tripping up. —

Matthew Continetti, National Review, 18 May 2024 Early-career employees trip up when their enviable self-worth manifests as entitlement. —

Phil Blair, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 May 2024 However, he has been tripped up in the past few weeks. —

Tal Axelrod, ABC News, 10 May 2024 The school leaders also seemed prepared for questions that had tripped up the Harvard and Penn presidents. —

Michael Levenson, New York Times, 8 May 2024 Zendaya's appeared at the gala five times while Lopez has a whopping 13 trips up the Met Gala steps under her belt. —

Jay Stahl, USA TODAY, 15 Feb. 2024 But the business got tripped up with overexpansion and brand mismanagement in recent years. —

Anne D'innocenzio, Fortune Europe, 17 Apr. 2024 On the busy rail corridor running through northwest Atlanta, there was a notorious stretch of track known for tripping up engineers. —

Topher Sanders, ProPublica, 15 Nov. 2023 Congress is beginning the week without a deal to avert a partial government shutdown by Friday's deadline -- as funding for the Department of Homeland Security trips up negotiations. —

Lauren Peller, ABC News, 18 Mar. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'trip up.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.