embellish
em-BEL-ish · verb
Origin
Embellish comes from Middle English embelishen, borrowed from Old French embellir, itself formed from em- (a prefix meaning 'to make') plus bel, meaning 'beautiful.'
This is Curio: one word's origin story, every morning. No feed, no backlog.
One short email each morning. Free; stop anytime. See a sample →
Journey
At its core, the word has always meant 'to make beautiful' — the sense of adding decorative or exaggerated flourishes grew naturally from that simple idea of beautifying something.
Related words
Bel, the root meaning 'beautiful,' ties embellish to other English words that carry the idea of beauty through French.