spruce

1. 1.

   make neat, smart, or trim

   “Spruce up your house for Spring”

   “titivate the child”

   Synonymsspruce uptitivatetittivatesmarten upslick upspiff up

   Broaderfancify
2. 2.

   dress and groom with particular care, as for a special occasion

   “He spruced up for the party”

   Synonymsspruce upslick upsmarten up

   Broadergroom

1. 1.

   marked by up-to-dateness in dress and manners

   “a dapper young man”

   “a jaunty red hat”

   Synonymsdapperdashingjauntynattyraffishrakishspiffysnappy

   Similarfashionable

Other forms of spruce

plural

spruces·

past tense

spruced·

present participle

sprucing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about spruce

What does spruce mean?

spruce means "light soft moderately strong wood of spruce trees; used especially for timbers and millwork". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in spruce?

spruce has 1 syllable: spruce. In IPA it is /ˈspɹus/.

What is another word for spruce?

Close synonyms include spruce up, titivate, tittivate, smarten up, slick 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.

Is spruce a common word?

spruce is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.