to polish up
4
3.5
- phrasal verb
- Informal
:
mejorar
- This way, one week every semester is devoted to you polishing up important papers or studying for exams.
- need to polish up
And so, yeah, over time, it's just polished up.
- And so, yeah, over time, it's just polished up.
Examples
-
A professional storyteller should be able to polish it up.
Fiction book (1995) -
Yeah, why don't you polish up some of those old ideas, make them nice and shiny for us?
-
And I just-- I wanted to take the weekend to polish it up.
-
I think you need to polish up your strategy a little.
Blog text (11) -
You got all your moves polished up?
-
I also need to polish up my Spooktoberfest entry, which I plan to post on Friday.
Blog text (13) -
While you are out of work, you can have the time to polish up any skills that may be applied to what you are seeking to do.
Blog text (20) -
I'm polishing up the final chapters of my confession.
-
We already have some pretty rough instructions for this written up—give me a little time to update and polish them up, and we will make them available to everyone.
Blog text (22) -
Before the big presentation, she decided to polish up her slideshow to make it more engaging.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
To make something better
424
4.0
Make something better or more attractive
113
4.8
Bring something to a finished state
93
4.0
Make something better by making a few small changes
85
3.9
To make something better by adding knowledge or nutrients
66
4.2
To make a skill better by careful practice
26
4.2
To make small changes so something works better
22
4.1
To make something better by small changes
22
3.7
Refresh your knowledge or skill by practising and reviewing
6
4.9
Work harder to improve your skills and do better
4
3.0
Make a room look cleaner and nicer with small changes
1
5.8
To make something better in how it works or how it looks
1
3.6
To add small final touches to make something complete
To get better at a skill by practising
To become or make something better
To make something more attractive by adding new parts
Add new parts or programs to a device so it can do more and work better
Antonyms
How Polished
Surface Forms
Morphology
The verb 'polish' already means to improve or perfect, and the particle 'up' adds a sense of enhancement or completion, so the combined meaning 'to improve or refine' is directly derivable from the parts. This verb+up pattern is a common, compositional English construction (and has parallels in many languages), making the MWE readily understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituents.
Etymology
Polish up comes from rubbing an object until it shines: polish means to rub to make something bright, and up adds the idea of finishing or bringing it to a higher state. So polish up now means 'to improve'.