Noun use of verb phrase spruce up
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One former official recalls a departing prime minister being peeved there was an "office spruce-up", with walls being freshly painted for their replacement about to arrive.
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026
You probably don’t want to put a new coat of paint on your exterior walls in February, but winter is an excellent time for interior painting and giving your rooms a quick spruce-up.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 5, 2022
When he’s going under the knife for a spruce-up face-lift, Lee insists that Scott get some face work done as well—in order to look more like the young Liberace.
From Slate ● May 24, 2013
Closed Monday through next Friday for the annual fall spruce-up.
From New York Times ● Sep. 6, 2012
Fresh from a multimillion-dollar spruce-up by Hirsch Bedner this past July, the Four Seasons has rightly reclaimed its crown as the best hotel in the buzzy Orchard Road shopping district.
From Time Magazine Archive
Helped into the apartment by an X Square engineer, the AI-operated Quanta X1 Pro robot uses its cameras to identify areas it could spruce up.
From Barron's ● Jun. 11, 2026
Nagi says that the conversation motivated her to visit the boy's slum community and she offered to spruce up the locality by decorating the walls with murals.
From BBC ● Feb. 18, 2026
Barr’s challenge is to improve CarMax’s online sales experience and lower the company’s costs to acquire and spruce up used cars for sale.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 12, 2026
MGM attempted to replicate its success by having Francis spruce up old chestnuts, but to no avail.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 17, 2025
Like Digger, he wore blue jeans and an untucked T-shirt and didn’t appear to have shaved or in any other way attempted to spruce up his appearance.
From "Red Kayak" by Priscilla Cummings
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
