embellish
/ɪmˈbɛlɪʃ
/ /ɛmˈbɛlɪʃ/verb [with object]
1Make (something) more attractive by the addition of decorative details or features: blue silk embellished with golden embroidery...
- Every station is embellished and decorated: delicate stars and hammers and sickles somewhat incongruously scattered about as decorative motifs.
- Using photos as a starting point, she embellished them with decorative elements like buttons and curled papers.
- Glass decorated with narrative scenes and with devices appropriated from the classical past were some of the Western decorative motifs used to embellish glass objects.
Synonyms
decorate, adorn, ornament, dress, dress up, furnish;
beautify, enhance, enrich, grace;
trim, garnish, gild, varnish;
brighten up, ginger up;
deck, bedeck, festoon, emblazon, bespangle
informal do up, do out, jazz up, zhoosh (up)
British informal tart up
literary bejewel, bedizen, caparison, furbelow, befrill
1.1Make (a statement or story) more interesting by adding extra details that are often untrue: followers often embellish stories about their heroes...
- And if people don't get the point, then I will simply repeat my windows story, now embellished by light switches, until they do.
- Over the centuries, after countless retellings, the story has been slightly embellished.
- The stress deepened her dependence on alcohol, and her amateurish efforts to market her story led her to embellish the details of her espionage.
Synonyms
elaborate, embroider, colour, expand on, exaggerate, dress up, touch up, gild, catastrophize
Derivatives
embellisher
- In the 1920s British historian Charles Grey savaged the American adventurer as an unhinged embellisher at best, a liar at worst.
- Americana provides fine active and casual apparel nationwide to promotional products distributors, screenprinters, embroiderers, and embellishers.
- It's like cleaning up an old painting, if you will, by removing the varnish that's become yellowed and opaque over the years, and reversing the misguided efforts of previous restorers and embellishers.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French embelliss-, lengthened stem of embellir, based on bel 'handsome', from Latin bellus.