to light up
64
2.5
- phrasal verb
- /laɪt ʌp/
:
iluminar
- Well, the second floor's all lit up.
- light up the sky
It would be a sword that lights up and makes sounds like he man.
- It would be a sword that lights up and makes sounds like he man.
- The part of the brain that lights up for tool use.
Examples
-
Every tower is lighting up.
-
All of a sudden, a sunbeam crossed my kitchen table and lit up my crystal salt shaker.
Academic text (1999) -
Whoa, look at it light up like an LED.
-
And then when it lights up, it looks like this.
-
Time to light up the sky!
-
As the corridor lights up ahead, the one behind goes dark.
-
Guys, I'm using my phone to light up my face.
-
At 2:00 A.M., it's lit up as bright as by day.
Fiction book (1993) -
They were lighting up the sky.
-
The fireworks will light up the night sky with brilliant colors.
Synonyms
905
1.0
To make something start to burn or shine
181
2.3
To produce light and heat from fire
161
1.2
To shine with a steady soft light
114
1.0
To point a light at something so you can see it
89
1.0
To give a sudden short bright light
70
1.9
To shine softly, often on a smooth or wet surface
52
4.1
To make something bright or visible with light
34
1.7
To burn or shine with a bright, hot light
18
4.2
To burn or shine with a sudden bright light
16
2.3
To make a place or color look brighter
6
3.0
To shine brightly and send light in a certain direction
6
3.3
To make a room or object look brighter and more cheerful
1
8.1
To light something or make it easier to understand
1
9.9
To light up a place or thing
1
4.1
Light that shines down from above, often from the sun
To make something shine with soft light
To direct light upward to make a wall or object stand out
Antonyms
How Bright
Surface Forms
Morphology
light + up
The sense 'to become lively or cheerful' follows directly from combining 'light' (to illuminate or make brighter) with the particle 'up' (intensifying/completing the action) — together they yield 'brighten', which easily extends metaphorically to mood or atmosphere. This verb+particle composition and the brightness→cheer metaphor are common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents is likely to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Light up comes from the simple image of lighting a lamp or a fire; when you light something it becomes bright and the small word up shows the change from dark to light, so the phrase means 'to become bright' or 'to make something bright'.