Dress up means to put on smarter clothes than usual, or to wear a costume and pretend to be someone else. In the first meaning, you usually mention the occasion: “dress up for a wedding”, “dress up for dinner”. In the second, the phrase is followed by “as” and the character: “dress up as a pirate”.
Want to use dress up in conversation?
Write a sentence — we'll show the mistakes right away and suggest how to say it more naturally.
The check is taking longer than usual. Your feedback will appear here automatically.
dress up (for + event); dress up as + character; get dressed = put on clothes
- Everyone dressed up for the company's anniversary dinner, so I felt awkward in my jeans.
- At the end-of-term party, our English teacher dressed up as Sherlock Holmes.
What changed
First versionFor the office Halloween party, Mark dressed up a pirate.
RevisionFor the office Halloween party, Mark dressed up as a pirate.
It is easy to leave out the preposition here. But “dressed up a pirate” means that Mark put clothes on some pirate. The character a person pretends to be comes after “as”, so “as” was added.
“Get dressed” simply means to put your clothes on, as you do every morning: I got dressed and made some coffee. “Dress up” is for clothes that are smarter than usual or for a costume. To talk about warm clothes, say “dress warmly” or “wrap up”: Wrap up, it's freezing outside.
Your turn
The dinner is at a smart restaurant, so we'll need to ___ a bit.
Show the answer
dress up — People wear smarter clothes than usual to a smart restaurant, and “a bit” softens the idea: make a little effort with your clothes. “Get dressed” just means to put clothes on, and you can't get dressed “a bit”.
Write about a time you dressed up for an event or wore a costume. Say what the event was and what you wore.
For my cousin's wedding last summer, I dressed up in a dark blue suit and new leather shoes.
Learn to use new words without mistakes
Write phrases with the words you are learning. LetsWords shows mistakes in usage and grammar, suggests corrections and explains them, and review helps the words stick.