dress up meaning
Verb: dress up
- Put on special clothes to appear particularly appealing and attractive
"She never dresses up, even when she goes to the opera"
- overdress, fig out, fig up, deck up, gussy up [N. Amer], fancy up, trick up, deck out, trick out, prink, attire, get up, rig out, tog up, tog out - Make something appear superficially attractive
"The researcher tried to dress up the uninteresting data"; "Don't try to dress up the unpleasant truth"
- window-dress - Put a caparison on
- caparison, bard, barde - Dress in a costume
"We dressed up for Halloween as pumpkins"
- costume - Dress in a certain manner
"he dressed up in a suit and tie"
- dress
Derived forms: dressed up, dresses up, dressing up
See also: dress
Type of: adorn, apparel, beautify, clothe, decorate, dress, embellish, enclothe, fancify, fit out, garb, garment, get dressed, grace, habilitate [archaic], ornament, prettify, raiment [archaic], tog
Antonym: dress down
[American slang]
v. 1a. To put on best or special clothes. Billy hated being dressed up and took off his best suit as soon as he got home from church. 1b. To put on a costume for fun or clothes for a part in a play. Mary was dressed up to play Cinderella in her school play. 2. To make (something) look different; make (something) seem better or more important. A fresh coat of paint will dress up the old bicycle very much. Tommy dressed up the story of what he did on vacation and made it seem twice as interesting as it was.
- dress (oneself) up: [American slang]to ...
- dress (up) as so or sth: [American slang]to ...
- dress so or sth up: [American slang]to ...
Examples
More: Next- she intended to dress up as a ghost.
- to dress up a simple expressive folk tune in the trappings of a symphony is to degrade it.
- it's not enough you dress up like a boy
- i took the hems of my dresses up to make them shorter
- my friends and i always dress up at halloween
