Verbal Used as Noun or Adjective?

What's a verbal, Em?

You don't PUT up a business. You build, run, own, have, fund a business. I'm not sure what PUT means here.

About 4,620,000 results for an exact phrase "put up a business" Google, Ceili. Granted some, many?? are portions of a longer sentence, eg. "put up a business for sale" but there seems to be quite a few hits for this sense.

I can see it being used for a fake/front business.

Then the sentence is not complete is it?

Yes, it is complete, Ceili. Obviously, the number of hits indicates that this collocation sees use in some dialects of English.

With all due respect...
If someone were to say that phrase to you, would you know what they were talking about? Slip it into a conversation and see what reaction you get.
I took a look at the google hits. This seems to be a favoured phrase in the Philippines. Not necessarily a haven for proper english.

English<>German dictionaries (only) know to put capital into a business and to put s.o. out of business

Walter I have no qualms with using put in a sentence with business, your example is fine. I would use it in the same manner, but I have no idea what 'put up a business' means.

No need for that, Ceili. I wouldn't expect anything else.



There are things I hear daily from numerous dialects of English that throw me. Ones own dialectal narrowness isn't a reliable test of what's what in English.

That sentence didn't throw me until you mentioned it. I realized then that it is not part of my particular dialect.



I've heard the same thing said about Canada, the USA, Australia, England, NZ. Now I'm not saying that it's truly established but again, the number of hits; I found it in an Ezine article,

Facebook has a,

Put Up a Business | Facebook

www.facebook.com/pages/Put-Up-a-Business/375302926122

And here's Article Alley; the title,

Putting Up A Business In Australia

The first thing that you need to get when you are planning to put up a business in Australia is of course a visa.

The author seems to be an English native speaker.

http://www.articlealley.com/article_1246712_29.html

Methinks we might be dealing with a rather new collocation, Walter, quite possibly with an internet/computer age meaning.

That's not exactly true, Ceili. I think that you do have a pretty good idea as you gave instances of synonym type meanings.

Of course, that's not to say that you couldn't have been off the mark, nor does it say that I'm correct in my feelings for its meaning. It's clearly not of our dialect but again, that doesn't mean it's not English.

Here's a hit for eastern Canada, Ceili, a London city councillor no less.

In this last case there is a lot more context. In the first example, there is none. It could leave a lot of confusion. I don't doubt that is a commonly used phrase, but spoken english can be rather vague and still convey the meaning. Written english should be more precise, as it can leave room for confusion otherwise.
However, if this is a common phrase, I've yet to hear it hear here or anywhere I've ever been.
That being said, my kids are constantly coming up with new meanings to old words, so maybe I'm just out of the loop. ;-)