Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To make beautiful, as by ornamentation; decorate.
- transitive verb To add ornamental or fictitious details to.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To set off with ornamentation; make beautiful, pleasing, or attractive to the eye or the mind; adorn; decorate; deck: as, to
embellish the person with rich apparel; to embellish a garden with shrubs and flowers; a style embellished by metaphors; a book embellished by engravings. - Synonyms Ornament, Decorate, etc. (see
adorn ). See list underdecorate .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To make beautiful or elegant by ornaments; to decorate; to adorn.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To make more
beautiful andattractive ; todecorate . - verb To make something sound or look
better or moreacceptable than it is in reality, todistort .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb make more attractive by adding ornament, colour, etc.
- verb add details to
- verb make more beautiful
- verb be beautiful to look at
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The only circle I didn't embellish is the one that looks like a button - this is actually a tiny scrap of a sunprinted fabric (sunprinted with buttons, that is).
Less like a manhole cover katelnorth 2008
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I just recently lied (though I prefer the word embellish) about my height by an inch.
FREAK-TV: What Do Online Daters Lie About? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com 2007
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We kind of embellish on that, I guess you could say.
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He pronounced "embellish" with a fancy-pants cadence.
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He pronounced "embellish" with a fancy-pants cadence.
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He pronounced "embellish" with a fancy-pants cadence.
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These worthies took upon themselves to mutilate the sculpture work on the marvellous façade and to "embellish" the austere cathedral with Gothic decorations of cardboard.
The Memoirs of Victor Hugo Victor Hugo 1843
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By 'embellish' he meant the share the artist has to bring to his picture in the first place. "
About.com Painting 2010
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By 'embellish' he meant the share the artist has to bring to his picture in the first place. "
About.com Painting 2010
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By 'embellish' he meant the share the artist has to bring to his picture in the first place. "
About.com Painting 2010
Comments
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