embellish

Embellish comes from Middle English embelishen, borrowed from Old French embellir, itself formed from em- (a prefix meaning 'to make') plus bel, meaning 'beautiful.'

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.

Bel, the root meaning 'beautiful,' ties embellish to other English words that carry the idea of beauty through French, though the facts here don't name a specific cognate.