"spiff up" meaning in English

See spiff up in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-spiff up.ogg [Australia] Forms: spiffs up [present, singular, third-person], spiffing up [participle, present], spiffed up [participle, past], spiffed up [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} spiff up (third-person singular simple present spiffs up, present participle spiffing up, simple past and past participle spiffed up)
  1. (transitive, slang, idiomatic) To decorate or otherwise make more attractive. Tags: idiomatic, slang, transitive Categories (topical): Appearance Translations: aufpolieren (German), aufbretzeln (German)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for spiff up meaning in English (2.2kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "spiffs up",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiffing up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiffed up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiffed up",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "spiff up (third-person singular simple present spiffs up, present participle spiffing up, simple past and past participle spiffed up)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English phrasal verbs with particle (up)",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Appearance",
          "orig": "en:Appearance",
          "parents": [
            "Perception",
            "Body",
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008, Preeta Samarasan, Evening is the Whole Day, Fourth Estate, page 22",
          "text": "He was all spiffed up, this chap, decked out in a spotless white shirt and a bow tie.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To decorate or otherwise make more attractive."
      ],
      "id": "en-spiff_up-en-verb-xuTPV-iD",
      "links": [
        [
          "decorate",
          "decorate"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive, slang, idiomatic) To decorate or otherwise make more attractive."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "slang",
        "transitive"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "word": "aufpolieren"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "word": "aufbretzeln"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-spiff up.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/87/En-au-spiff_up.ogg/En-au-spiff_up.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/En-au-spiff_up.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "spiff up"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "spiffs up",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiffing up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiffed up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiffed up",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "spiff up (third-person singular simple present spiffs up, present participle spiffing up, simple past and past participle spiffed up)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrasal verbs",
        "English phrasal verbs with particle (up)",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English transitive verbs",
        "English verbs",
        "en:Appearance"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008, Preeta Samarasan, Evening is the Whole Day, Fourth Estate, page 22",
          "text": "He was all spiffed up, this chap, decked out in a spotless white shirt and a bow tie.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To decorate or otherwise make more attractive."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "decorate",
          "decorate"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive, slang, idiomatic) To decorate or otherwise make more attractive."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "slang",
        "transitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-spiff up.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/87/En-au-spiff_up.ogg/En-au-spiff_up.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/En-au-spiff_up.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "word": "aufpolieren"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "word": "aufbretzeln"
    }
  ],
  "word": "spiff up"
}
{
  "called_from": "page/2517",
  "msg": "UNIMPLEMENTED parse_translation_template: trans-top-see {1: 'to decorate or otherwise make more attractive', 2: 'spruce up'}",
  "path": [
    "spiff up",
    "trans-top-see"
  ],
  "section": "English",
  "subsection": "verb",
  "title": "spiff up",
  "trace": ""
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.