Word.ws English Dictionary

freshen up

freshen up verb: to wash or groom oneself in order to be more attractive.

Verb

freshen up (third-person singular simple present freshens up, present participle freshening up, simple past and past participle freshened up)

  1. (intransitive, reflexive) To wash or groom oneself in order to be more attractive.
    • Women spend longer than men at freshening up before going out.
  2. (transitive) To freshen, make fresh, revivify, make new.
    • After beating champions Chelsea 3-1 on Boxing Day, Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger made eight changes to his starting XI in an effort to freshen things up, with games against Birmingham and Manchester City to come in the next seven days.2010 December 29, Mark Vesty, “Wigan 2 - 2 Arsenal”, in BBC

Forms of freshen up

third-person singular presentfreshens up
present participlefreshening up
past participlefreshened up
pastfreshened up

Origin of freshen up

From freshen + up. Compare Saterland Frisian apfriskje (“to refresh, freshen up”), West Frisian opfrisje (“to refresh, freshen up”), Dutch opfrissen (“to refresh, freshen up”), German auffrischen (“to refresh, freshen up”).

Questions about freshen up

What does freshen up mean?
Freshen up means to wash or groom oneself in order to be more attractive.
What part of speech is freshen up?
Freshen up is a verb.
What is the past tense of freshen up?
The past tense of freshen up is freshened up.

Words near freshen up in the dictionary

  1. fresh-water
  2. freshe
  3. freshed
  4. freshed up
  5. freshen
  6. freshen up
  7. freshened
  8. freshened up
  9. freshener
  10. fresheners
  11. freshening

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: freshen up (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “freshen up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/freshen_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.