glow-up
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From glow + up, modelled after such deverbals as blow-up; diachronically, probably not a deverbal from the verb glow up, which was back-formed from the noun.
Noun
- (slang) A major and impressive transformation in appearance, talent, power, etc.
- Antonym: glow-down
- 2017, Vicky Pattison, My Sister's Wedding, →ISBN:
- I recognised this in college, before he got his teeth done, before he got the tan and the #confidence and the style, back when he was obsessed with Eminem and had terrible bleached hair. I bagged him as my bestie nice and early, before his uber glow-up.
- 2018, Hannah Jewell, She Caused a Riot: 100 Unknown Women Who Built Cities, Sparked Revolutions, and Massively Crushed It, unnumbered page:
- Let us now marvel at a lady who achieved one of the most impressive glow ups in the thousand-plus-years history of the Byzantine Empire: Empress Theodora.
- 2020, Sarah Bahr, "Powerful Women Of Newfields", Newfields, Spring 2020, page 8:
- As the country's foremost fountain fashioner in the early 20th century, this Hoosier gave the gardens of wealthy Americans their glow-ups.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:glow-up.