prettify
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make pretty, especially in a small, petty way.
to prettify a natural beauty.
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to minimize or gloss over (something unpleasant).
to prettify his rude behavior.
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of prettify
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.
See Examples For:
Leight doesn’t prettify the ugly side of our history.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 17, 2023
Instead, they take an approach that is at once more generous and more unsparing, refusing to either condemn their characters or prettify them.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 9, 2019
But Denis doesn’t just prettify her actors: She lingers on their forms, their skin, stressing texture that becomes tactile.
From New York Times ● Apr. 4, 2019
His job was not to prettify, but to warp and curdle.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 5, 2014
But I knowed I had to prettify the story even more.
From "Elijah of Buxton" by Christopher Paul Curtis
In their telling, she added, “rivers were supposed to be prettified, we were supposed to generate significant quantities of clean electricity and local communities were promised it will all benefit them greatly.”
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 10, 2022
Even these startlingly grim numbers have been heavily prettified by Root, who has been papering over some tectonic faults in his team's batting.
From BBC ● Dec. 13, 2021
Oakland has long defined itself by what it’s not, which is to say the prettified and pretentious city across the bay.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2019
His version sounds less like the prettified Jeff Buckley version than like a work by John Lee Hooker.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 10, 2016
This has a prettified and pleasant sound—in speaking of a great, or rather of a big, nation.
From The Ghost in the White House Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can mak by Gerald Stanley Lee
Graf’s approach is admirably less enamored with the prettifying impulses so many filmmakers rely on to capture the past, and instead centered on putting us inside it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 3, 2022
“New buildings should fit naturally into their surroundings, both architecturally and historically, without denying or prettifying the concerns of our time,” he said in his Pritzker acceptance speech.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 11, 2021
Cale is not interested in circumventing or prettifying anguish: let it come down.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 22, 2017
There are materials such as carpet squares and windowpanes for prettifying the work.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 14, 2014
Some of those words might be freed people prettifying things, but some of it was real!
From "Elijah of Buxton" by Christopher Paul Curtis
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
