ponerse al día
/poˌneɾse al ˈdia/
In Spanish, catching up is ponerse al día.
The phrase is used to describe talking to someone you have not seen for a while to learn what has happened in their life.
What does it mean word for word?
Literally, ponerse al día means 'to put oneself to the day'.
How does it change in a sentence?
To specify who you are catching up with, use the preposition con followed by the person, as in ponerse al día con alguien. If you want to describe the continuous action of catching up, use the gerund form poniéndose al día.
How do you pronounce it?
/poˌneɾse al ˈdia/
Did you know?
- While ponerse al día refers to catching up with a person, the same phrase is used in computing to describe 'updating' software or a system to the latest version.
- The phrase ponerse al día is actually a calque, or a direct linguistic translation, of the French expression mise à jour.
- In a professional context, ponerse al día can mean catching up on a backlog of work or reading old emails, not just chatting with a friend.
Examples in context
- Necesito ponerme al día con los informesI need to catch up on the reports
- Voy a ponerme al corriente con los pagosI am going to catch up with the payments
- Debo ponerme al tanto de los últimos avances en el proyectoI need to catch up on the latest developments in the project
- Tenemos que ponernos al día, hace mucho que no nos vemosWe need to catch up, it's been a while since we last saw each other
- Vamos a ponernos al corriente este fin de semanaLet's catch up this weekend
- ¡Qué alegría encontrarte! Tenemos mucho de qué ponernos al día.How great to see you! We have a lot to catch up on.
- Tenemos que ponernos al día.We have to catch up.
Sources
- Pronunciation: Wiktionary entry ponerse al día, CC BY-SA 4.0, dump of 2026-09-26.
- Word origins: Wiktionary entries día, ponerse al día, CC BY-SA 4.0.
