tart up
Britishverb
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to dress and make (oneself) up in a provocative way
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to decorate or improve the appearance of
to tart up a bar
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.
“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
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.
