beautify

Verb

beautify (third-person singular simple present beautifies, present participle beautifying, simple past and past participle beautified)

1. (transitive) To make beautiful; to increase the beauty of.
   • […] there is an vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you:1592, Robert Greene, Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, London: William Wright, “Robertoes Tale”
   • And now, / This ornament [i.e. beard] / Makes me look dismal will I clip to form; / And what this fourteen years no razor touch’d, / To grace thy marriage-day, I’ll beautify.c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and Thomas Creede] for Henry...

   Synonyms:

   adorn, decorate, ornament, prettify

   Antonyms:

   blight, deface, disfigure, mar, uglify

2. (intransitive, rare) To become beautiful.
   • […] it must be a Prospect pleasing to God himself, to see his Creation for ever beautifying in his Eyes, and drawing nearer to him, by greater Degrees of Resemblance.1719, Joseph Addison, “Upon the Immortality of the Soul”, in Maxims, Observations, and Reflections, London: E. Curll, page 88
3. (intransitive, rare) To make oneself beautiful.
   • She’d felt silly when she first put cucumbers on her eyes (to diminish puffiness), or oatmeal on her face (to cleanse the pores and absorb excess oils), or egg yolks in her hair (to make it shine). Her use of groceries had even made my mother laugh, then wonder if she should start to beautify.2002, Alice Sebold, chapter 13, in The Lovely Bones, London: Picador, page 156
4. Synonym of pretty-print.

   Synonyms:

   prettify, pretty-print

   Antonyms:

   minify, uglify