does up

verb

present tense third-person singular of do up
1
as in adorns
to make more attractive by adding something that is beautiful or becoming the whole house had been done up for Halloween

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in clothes
to outfit with clothes and especially fine or special clothes on Wild West Day some of the women came to the office done up as showgirls, while the men were mostly outlaws

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms
3
as in wears
to use up all the physical energy of all of this fussing about the wedding has done me up

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for does up
  1. adorns
  2. dresses
  3. wears
  4. decorates
  5. dresses up
  6. kills
  7. does in
  8. exhausts
Verb
  • The story of Sue and Ron Wilson's life together, happily spanning 60 years, adorns their apartment.
    — Jeff Wagner, CBS News, 27 Aug. 2026
  • Being the kind of person who adorns themselves compulsively opens you up to a slew of corny metaphors that, against your will, feel deeply relevant to you.
    — Julissa James, Los Angeles Times, 12 Aug. 2026
Definition of adorns
Verb
  • Later, CeCe dresses her up in a pink tutu and makes up a dance for her kitten.
    — Parents, Parents, 31 July 2026
  • Young, who dresses Dakota Johnson, Julianne Moore, and Scarlett Johansson, spotlighted it as an essential for summer travel in her latest Quince curation.
    — Olivia Cigliano, InStyle, 31 July 2026
Definition of dresses
Verb
  • Olivia Miles, the rookie point guard for the Minnesota Lynx, wears a pair of bug-eyed sports goggles, black and bulbous, sometimes held in place by a thick strap that runs through her luxuriant Afro.
    — Louisa Thomas, New Yorker, 30 Aug. 2026
  • Every patient wears a card on a lanyard, encoded so the equipment knows who's standing in front of it.
    — Christopher Elliott, Forbes.com, 29 Aug. 2026
Definition of wears
Verb
  • The print decorates a semi-sheer collarless evening jacket, an ideal day-to-night piece, according to Brock.
    — Ari Stark, Footwear News, 22 July 2026
  • The painting that decorates the ceiling, Apollo Slaying the Serpent Python, was created by the artist Eugène Delacroix.
    — News Desk, Artforum, 22 July 2026
Definition of decorates
Verb
  • In a town that dresses up the seafood shack classics, Barbary Coast’s Mediterranean menu stands apart.
    — Madeline Bilis, Travel + Leisure, 18 Aug. 2026
  • This Amazon style has a similar polished pointed-toe design that not only dresses up your outfit but also elongates your legs.
    — Nicol Natale, PEOPLE, 30 June 2026
Definition of dresses up
Verb
  • Because the coating stops being an insulator when its breakdown threshold is reached, the charge rips through it in a miniature dielectric breakdown, the same failure mode that kills capacitors and transformer insulation.
    — Jacek Krywko, ArsTechnica, 31 Aug. 2026
  • The forest feels healthy even though it is pockmarked with dead standing beetle kills.
    — Megan Schrader, Denver Post, 27 Aug. 2026
Definition of kills
Verb
  • Meta could introduce technical solutions, like automatically blurring faces, as Google does in Street View images, but Szydlowski doubts Meta would voluntarily make such a privacy-conscious change without regulatory or public pressure.
    — Ashley Belanger, ArsTechnica, 21 Aug. 2026
  • This and that Why yes, Dolphins quarterback Malik Willis does in fact play with his shoelaces untied.
    — Barry Jackson, Miami Herald, 21 Aug. 2026
Definition of does in
Verb
  • If a bureaucratic process exhausts whatever time a citizen has available, then benefits are lost or rights are denied.
    — Joshua Rothman, New Yorker, 14 Aug. 2026
  • That’s because even ordinary winds – and far worse, storms and earthquakes – cause tall buildings to sway, which ruins people’s concentration, wrecks their mood, and even exhausts them.
    — New Atlas, New Atlas, 24 July 2026
Definition of exhausts
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

does the trick
does up
doff
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Does up.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/does%20up. Accessed 1 Sep. 2026.

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