embellish
pronunciation
How to pronounce embellish in British English:
UK [ɪmˈbelɪʃ]
How to pronounce embellish in American English:
US [ɪmˈbelɪʃ]
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- Verb:
- add details to
- be beautiful to look at
- make more attractive by adding ornament, colour, etc.
- make more beautiful
Word Origin
- embellish
- embellish: [14] To embellish something is literally to ‘make it beautiful’. It comes from Old French embellir, a compound verb formed from the prefix en-, which denotes ‘causing’ or ‘making’, and bel ‘beautiful’. This Old French adjective (source of modern French beau) came from Latin bellus ‘beautiful’, and its other English offspring include beau, belle, and beauty.=> beau, beauty, belle
- embellish (v.)
- mid-14c., "to render beautiful," from Old French embelliss-, stem of embellir "make beautiful, ornament," from assimilated form of en- (see en- (1)) + bel "beautiful," from Latin bellus "handsome, pretty, fine" (see bene-). Meaning "dress up (a narration) with fictitious matter" is from mid-15c. Related: Embellished; embellishing.
Example
- 1. The research also finds that graduates from elite universities embellish the least .
- 2. Now I wanted to add some shapes and more text to embellish mywantedtext .
- 3. We may embellish the 2011 arab spring as the hopeful by-product of the information age , but we should not downplay the primary role of runaway food prices and of the many desperate people who became more hungry than scared .
- 4. In a socialist country steeped in the traditions of a confucian dynasty , it is of paramount importance for the country 's new leader to embellish his rise to power with events that show his loyalty to his forefathers while demonstrating his own abilities to lead , analysts said .
- 5. But people do tend to embellish their avatars somewhat .