Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To make decorative additions to; spruce up.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To dress or spruce up; get or put into good trim; smarten, or smarten one's self.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- verb Both Humorous, Both Humorous To dress or smarten up; to spruce.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To make small
improvements oralterations to (one's appearance etc.); to add some finishing touches to.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb make neat, smart, or trim
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The word titivate apparently was derived from tidy with a quasi-Latin suffix added.
Word Fugitives 2004
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The word titivate apparently was derived from tidy with a quasi-Latin suffix added.
Word Fugitives 2004
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The ball was a neat little matter of fifty-five miles away, across country, so she had to start tolerably early, of course, in order to have comfortable time to "titivate," as Pip expressed it.
Seven Little Australians Ethel Sybil Turner 1915
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Chelsea bores her, so she takes a private jet to Cannes, gets Katie Price's hairdresser to titivate her, hires a table in a VVIP room for £20k, then strops off home after 20 minutes as someone appears in the room who's not to her suiting.
Tamara Ecclestone: Billion $$ Girl – Grace Dent's TV OD 2011
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If they had any sense, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, on whose northern border this is, would buy it off him, titivate it a bit, and open it as a nineteenth-century museum.
Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010
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Every day the order would go out to 'titivate the ship,' which meant to 'spruce it up or make it neat and orderly.'
Word Fugitives 2004
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Let me go down and settle whilst you call in your black man and titivate a bit.
The Virginians 2006
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Every day the order would go out to 'titivate the ship,' which meant to 'spruce it up or make it neat and orderly.'
Word Fugitives 2004
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From beside the Long Water in the last of the pale sunlight, she came out into Marylebone, and bethought herself that before she went to the Foreign Office she must go where she could titivate.
Maid in Waiting 2004
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But Cai -- on his way upstairs to titivate -- perceived that the lamp was lit and the cloth spread in his own parlour; and, as he noted this with a vague surprise, encountered Mrs Bowldler.
Hocken and Hunken Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903
chained_bear commented on the word titivate
"On this calm, sunny day the ships all had their ports open to air the lower decks, and behind these ports he saw the guns, row after row of guns, with seamen titivating them."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission, 256
February 14, 2008
bilby commented on the word titivate
"In The Idle Class, when Chaplin is titivating in a hotel room, the cloth on his dressing table rides up and down, caught in the same furious gusts."
- Peter Conrad, 'Modern Times, Modern Places'.
October 8, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word titivate
*sigh* ... Chaplin...
October 12, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word titivate
"I did my bit, bringing up those blessed boxes. I leave the titivating to Lilian. She loves all that sort of thing. She can titivate for England, she can."
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, p 18
September 24, 2014