Word.ws English Dictionary

spicing up

spicing up is the present participle and gerund of spice up.

Meaning of spice up

Verb

spice up (third-person singular simple present spices up, present participle spicing up, simple past and past participle spiced up)

  1. To enhance the flavor of something by adding spice to it.
    • January 2008, The Eagle-Tribune - Fresh or dried? Spice up your cooking with the right seasonings
  2. (informal, transitive) To make more exotic, fun or extravagant.
    • The good sister is there to minister to his spiritual needs, the nurse is there to bind his wounds, and the prostitute is there to spice up his bland sex life.1984, Rosemarie Tong - Women, Sex, and the Law page 39

Questions about spicing up

What is spicing up the present participle and gerund of?
Spicing up is the present participle and gerund of spice up.

Words near spicing up in the dictionary

  1. spicigerous
  2. spicily
  3. spiciness
  4. spicinesses
  5. spicing
  6. spicing up
  7. spicish
  8. spick
  9. spick and span
  10. spick and spandy
  11. spick-and-span

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spicing up (page history and authors); spice 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: “spicing up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spicing_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.