Most learners meet strike up attached to a single word — conversation — and stop there. That undersells the expression.
Yes: "strike up a friendship" or "strike up a relationship" correctly names the beginning of an ongoing personal or professional bond, separate from a single conversation and separate from how that bond later develops or is maintained.
A conversation ends; a friendship continues
This is a distinct sense from the conversational one. A single conversation can be struck up in an afternoon, but a friendship or working relationship struck up at that same conversation is an ongoing bond that continues afterward.
"She struck up a friendship with a colleague from a different office after they were seated together at the same conference table." The conversation was the opening move; the friendship is what kept going once the conference ended.
"He struck up a working relationship with the new regional lead during her first week, long before the two teams were formally asked to collaborate." Again, the word marks the origin of something that outlasts the moment it names.
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Start learning for free →The word still only covers the beginning
Once the relationship exists, later stages need different verbs. Writing that a relationship has been "struck up" for an extended period is a real error, not a style choice, because it applies the beginning-verb to a state that has already existed for years.
"We have struck up the relationship for five years" is wrong — it applies a beginning-verb to five years of an ongoing state. "We struck up the relationship five years ago, and we've maintained it ever since" separates the origin from the upkeep correctly.
Practice scenarios
Practice using strike up in situations like:
- describing how a friendship began with a colleague from another team
- narrating the origin of a working relationship with a new manager or peer
- separating a relationship's beginning from years of maintaining it afterward
Useful practice phrases:
- "I struck up a friendship with..."
- "We struck up a working relationship after..."
- "We struck up the relationship [time period] ago, and we've maintained it since."
A relationship, like a fire, needs one verb to describe how it was lit and a completely different one to describe how it was kept burning.
Strike up only ever does the lighting.
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