Pronounced: eye-DOH-luhn, noun
Notes: Another new word for me
Yesterday’s word
The word titivate means “to make or become smart or spruce”
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1700s to early 1800s
Background / Comments
Our word came (it is thought) from a combination of tidy and elevate — thus, “to tidy up”. Our word is a synonym of “spruce [up]”, “smarten”, and “spiff”, but here are the fine distinctions: titivate usually refers to making small additions or alterations in attire; “spruce up” refers to cosmetic changes (or renovations) that give the appearance of newness; “smarten up” and “spiff up” mean to improve in appearance often by making more neat or stylish. As a final note, there is another word titivate (a homograph of our word) that became incorrectly associated with “titillate” in the 1910s.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 