dress up

1. 1.

   put on special clothes to appear particularly appealing and attractive

   “She never dresses up, even when she goes to the opera”

   “The young girls were all fancied up for the party”

   Synonymsoverdressfig outfig updeck upgussy upfancy uptrick updeck outtrick outprinkattireget uprig outtog up

   Antonymsdress down

   Broaderdress

   Narrowerpreenpranktart upenrobebedizen
2. 2.

   make something appear superficially attractive

   “The researcher tried to dress up the uninteresting data”

   “Don't try to dress up the unpleasant truth”

   Synonymswindow-dress

   Broaderfancify
3. 3.

   put a caparison on

   “caparison the horses for the festive occasion”

   Synonymscaparisonbardbarde

   Broaderdecorate
4. 4.

   dress in a costume

   “We dressed up for Halloween as pumpkins”

   Synonymscostume

   Broaderdress
5. 5.

   dress in a certain manner

   “She dresses in the latest Paris fashion”

   “he dressed up in a suit and tie”

   Synonymsdress

   Broaderdress

   Narrowervest

Questions about dress up

What does dress up mean?

dress up means "put on special clothes to appear particularly appealing and attractive". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for dress up?

Close synonyms include overdress, fig out, fig up, deck up, gussy up. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of dress up?

The recorded antonyms are dress down.

Is dress up a common word?

dress up is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.