Lexic.us

Definition of Dress up

1. Verb. Put on special clothes to appear particularly appealing and attractive. "The young girls were all fancied up for the party"

2. Verb. Make something appear superficially attractive. "Don't try to dress up the unpleasant truth"

3. Verb. Put a caparison on. "Caparison the horses for the festive occasion"

4. Verb. Dress in a costume. "We dressed up for Halloween as pumpkins"

5. Verb. Dress in a certain manner. "He dressed up in a suit and tie"

Definition of Dress up

1. Verb. (intransitive) To wear fancy dress. ¹

2. Verb. (intransitive) To wear a costume. ¹

3. Verb. (transitive) To decorate; to prettify. ¹

4. Verb. (transitive) To present in a favorable light. ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Lexicographical Neighbors of Dress Up

dress form dress hanger dress hat dress out dress rack dress rehearsal dress rehearsals dress shield dress shields dress ship

dress shirt dress shop dress suit dress uniform dress up (current term) dress whites dressable dressage dressages dressed

dressed(p) dressed-up dressed down dressed ore dressed particle dressed to kill(p) dressed to the nines dressed to the nines(p) dressed up

Literary usage of Dress up

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. Punch by Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Tom Taylor, Shirley Brooks, Francis Cowley Burnand, Owen Seaman (1879)
"The others at table—there are several to whom I have not been introduced—hope that FISHER will dress up and amuse the company. We don't care what he dresses ..."

2. The Law in Business Problems: Cases and Other Materials for the Study of by Lincoln Frederick Schaub, Nathan Isaacs (1921)
"The jury have negatived the claim of the defendant that the plaintiff gave her instructions to make the dress up wrong side out. The defendant had begun to ..."

3. The Christian Remembrancer by William Scott (1848)
"... &c.;" and then he goes on to dress up his own microcosm as dexterously as stage mechanists can turn the boards of the Adelphi into a world of waters, ..."

4. The history of the French revolution, tr. with notes by F. Shoberl by Thomas Carlyle, Marie Joseph L. Adolphe Thiers (1838)
"Vincent rejoined that this dress was very pompous but unworthy of genuine republicans: he declared that he would dress up a puppet in that costume, ..."

5. Suomalais-englantilainen sanakirja by Severi Alanne (1919)
"... dress up (os), deck (1. adorn) os, make os smart (1. trim); ... put on one's clothes, get (os) dressed, dress up (os), make Лап ei ole ..."

6. A Soldier of France to His Mother: Letters from the Trenches on the Western by Eugène Emmanuel Lemercier (1917)
"... due mainly to my artistic tastes, is trying to dress up the soul of our race in a fine robe painted in the colors I like. So when these fellows bother ..."

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