1,400 new words in our dictionary! — Parasocial, glow-up, promposal & more
1,400 new words in our dictionary! — More

sneaked up

verb

variants or snuck up
past tense of sneak up
as in crept up

Related Words

Relevance

Dissimilar Words

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for sneaked up
  1. turned up
  2. showed up
  3. arrived
  4. hit
  5. reached
Verb
  • Local cases have also turned up in Texas, California, Arizona and Hawaii.
    — Andrés Henao, CNN Money, 21 Sep. 2026
  • For 718 days, as one season gave way to the next and search after search turned up empty, Nancy Tucker remained missing.
    — Brady Dennis, Washington Post, 18 Sep. 2026
Definition of turned up
Verb
  • According to Ayer, that exhaustion showed up in the movie, as Pitt couldn’t relax or rely on the typical comforts of a film set.
    — Jim Hemphill, IndieWire, 25 Sep. 2026
  • Lehrer arranged a meeting to sell him the files—then never showed up.
    — Ruth Margalit, New Yorker, 19 Sep. 2026
Definition of showed up
Verb
  • Melton fled the scene before deputies arrived and was found a short time later at Pamela Way and Jeanette Cove in Alexander, the report says.
    — Arkansas Online, Arkansas Online, 23 Sep. 2026
  • Those who arrived in the 1900s had very different cultural, political, and religious backgrounds from the older Texas Jews.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 22 Sep. 2026
Definition of arrived
Verb
  • The first curveball of the night came when word hit that Young was closing out the night, as opposed to Willie Nelson.
    — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 23 Sep. 2026
  • Following a bohemian couple from Istanbul who hit a wall both creatively and personally, this slow-burn drama takes a little too much time to get the ball rolling but evolves into an honest portrait of artists finding their way out of the darkness.
    — Jordan Mintzer, HollywoodReporter, 23 Sep. 2026
Definition of hit
Verb
  • While the total economic fallout of an extreme El Nino is hard to calculate, losses from past events have reached trillions of dollars, according to HSBC's Global Investment Research, which warns the numbers could be even bigger this time.
    — EDNA TARIGAN, Arkansas Online, 23 Sep. 2026
  • In a study of more than 200 projects, the Charles Pankow Foundation and the Design-Build Institute of America found design-build reached the finish roughly twice as fast as the traditional bid approach.
    — Kevin Henneman, Forbes.com, 23 Sep. 2026
Definition of reached
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

sneaked
sneaked up
sneaker
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Sneaked up.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sneaked%20up. Accessed 29 Sep. 2026.

Copy Citation
Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

More from Merriam-Webster

Word of the Day

Listen to the pronunciation of argot

See Definitions and Examples »

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

Do You Need a New Language Peeve?

More Commonly Mispronounced Words

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

'A' or 'an'? What about before 'h'? An Indefinite Article Guide

Why is '-ed' sometimes pronounced at the end of a word?
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

7 Great Ways to Say 'Great'

The Longest Long Words List

9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't

12 Lovely and Unusual Words for the Natural World

Why do we 'bury the lede?'
See More

Popular

See More

Do You Need a New Language Peeve?

7 Great Ways to Say 'Great'

The Longest Long Words List
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
image of the words cracker fly and sale arranged in a triangle with the word fire in the middle
Triple Play Quiz Find the word that pairs with each of the three g...
See All