brain up

British

verb

to make more intellectually demanding or sophisticated

we need to brain up the curriculum

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

In Doctor Who almost every week there was a new monster to scare you as a child and it just fired my creative brain up.

From BBC • Apr. 8, 2022

Hooking a brain up directly to electronics is not new.

From Seattle Times • Aug. 28, 2020

And if you’ve somehow avoided a fully liquified brain up to this point, you probably have some questions about what happened and how much you actually need to care.

From Slate • Feb. 25, 2020

“I’m waking my brain up a little bit when I’m doing that,” Burakovsky said.

From Washington Post • Oct. 29, 2018

I agreed with "Rus" not feeling equal to stacking my brain up against his, and besides he has a way of making things sound darn logical.

From Interference and Other Football Stories by Sherman, Harold Morrow

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023