embellish
/ɪmˈbɛlɪʃ/verb
to decorate or add details, sometimes fictitious
From French, from en- em- (in) + O.French, from Latin bel (beautiful).
Lineage
em-
bel
The story
At its simplest, embellish is a little act of transformation: Old French em- means something like “into,” and bel means “beautiful.” By the mid-14th century, English speakers were using it for making something beautiful; within about a century, it could also mean dressing up a story with invented details. That second sense is a wonderfully revealing twist: a plain tale gets ornamented just like a bare room gets decorated. The bel hiding inside the word comes from Latin bellus, “pretty” or “handsome,” also behind belle. So when someone embellishes a story, they are, etymologically speaking, giving it a beauty treatment—with the occasional extra flourish that never actually happened.
Modern usage
A reported informal use meaning to defeat or socially destroy someone.
- Heard in
- online slang · gaming