Word.ws English Dictionary

smarten up

smarten up verb: to wear smart clothes and look more stylish.

Verb

smarten up (third-person singular simple present smartens up, present participle smartening up, simple past and past participle smartened up)

  1. (intransitive) To wear smart clothes and look more stylish
  2. (intransitive) To make something look smart or smarter.
    • All the trains and the 300 stations were smartened up, "and we dared to advertise" - something that had previously been impossible because the offering was not good enough.2026 April 1, Christian Wolmar, “Managers must be given freedom to make decisions”, in RAIL, number 1058, page 34
  3. (intransitive) To become less stupid or naive
  4. (transitive) To make less stupid or naive

Forms of smarten up

third-person singular presentsmartens up
present participlesmartening up
past participlesmartened up
pastsmartened up

Questions about smarten up

What does smarten up mean?
Smarten up means to wear smart clothes and look more stylish.
What part of speech is smarten up?
Smarten up is a verb.
What is the past tense of smarten up?
The past tense of smarten up is smartened up.

Words near smarten up in the dictionary

  1. smartcards
  2. smartdust
  3. smarted
  4. smarted off
  5. smarten
  6. smarten up
  7. smartened
  8. smartened up
  9. smartening
  10. smartening up
  11. smartens

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: smarten 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: “smarten up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/smarten_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.