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tart up

British  

verb

  1. to dress and make (oneself) up in a provocative way

  2. to decorate or improve the appearance of

    to tart up a bar

"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.

See Examples For:

“All we did was tart up a hole and claim it was an abyss,” Beckett types.

From New York Times ● Sep. 30, 2022

When we ran out of ways to tart up the lowly isobar, we went off-planet.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 4, 2018

A deeply cynical movie masquerading as a complex moral dilemma, the Australian drama “Felony” proves only that skilled actors and slick photography can tart up even the most problematic script.

From New York Times ● Oct. 16, 2014

Perhaps that explains why designers tart up these apps with so many multimedia baubles—the talking characters, the interactive puzzles, the animation.

From Slate ● Jun. 1, 2012

In its efforts to "tart up" the news, CBS put her in the position of playing to her weaknesses rather than her strengths.

From Time Magazine Archive

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