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Definition
make something more attractive or interesting by adding to it- Tell me exactly what happened without embellishment.
embellishment = anything added to increase attractiveness or interest
- The young girl is lovely and her tears only embellish her; the lady appears to be about forty years of age, the girl about fourteen.Dumas, Alexandre -- Twenty Years After
- We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity.Emerson, Ralph Waldo -- Essays, First Series
- Still, all this might be bearable if only the grown-ups weren't in the habit of repeating the stories we hear from Mr. Kleiman, jan or Miep, each time embellishing them with a few details of their own, so that I often have to pinch my arm under the table to keep myself from setting the enthusiastic storyteller on the right track.Anne Frank -- The Diary of a Young Girl
- He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the seven chambers,Edgar Allan Poe -- The Masque of the Red Death
- We had just heard the story recounted so many times over the years that it was easy to take the details and fold them into our own sparse memories, embellishing here or there to fill in the blanks.Sarah Dessen -- Dreamland
- "The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description."Edgar Allan Poe -- The Purloined Letter
- Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.Cicero
- This act would not be a little patch on the face of his reputation to embellish it, but a very malignant ulcer to disfigure it.Hugo, Victor -- Notre-Dame de Paris
- The famous air-gun of Von Herder will embellish the Scotland Yard Museum, and once again Mr.Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan -- The Return of Sherlock Holmes
- Life you embellish and elevate; but art would find itself able to do nothing with you, and, on such impossible terms, would ruin you.James, Henry -- The Story of It
- Why must morality and truth never be offered in their crude form, but only with embellishments, sweetened and gilded like pills?Anton Chekhov -- Home
- Shall I tell you without any embellishments?Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Idiot
- We have disguises that, perhaps with some embellishments from Tigris's furry stock, could get us safely there.Suzanne Collins -- Mockingjay
- I suppose that there are some types of beauty and even of youth made for the embellishments that come with enduring sorrow.Ford Madox Ford -- The Good Soldier
- At eye-level, next to Emmi's bare knee, was a small plastic medical kit embellished with a green cross.William Styron -- Sophie's Choice
- He was comfortable with himself; he didn't need any embellishment.James Bradley -- Flags of Our Fathers
- Mom's embellishments and half-truths usually equip her to tell a good story, though.Christina Garcia -- Dreaming in Cuban
- What we have, even in our earliest recorded literature, are variants, embellishments, versions, what Frye called "displacement" of the myth.Thomas C. Foster -- How to Read Literature Like a Professor
- Two or three exquisite paintings of children, in various attitudes, embellished the wall.Harriet Beecher Stowe -- Uncle Tom's Cabin
embellishing = making more interesting by adding to
embellishments = things added to make something more attractive or interesting
embellishing = making something more attractive or interesting by adding to it
embellish = make something more attractive or interesting by adding to it