Straighten up

Usage examples of neaten.

The bureaucrat gently loads the kid back up with packages, neatens them.

Belatedly pressed to neaten his wind-crumpled mantle, Lord Diegan expelled a breathless laugh.

She worked her way down the bench, grooming the grass beneath the willow until it was neatened to her satisfaction.

He took the radio, went back to the living room and neatened up the books.

He neatened himself with brisk movements, tucking in his shirt and fastening his trousers.

As Anna helped the girl to straighten herself and found a comb to brush her untidy hair, Thiemo and Matto gathered up the harness, neatened up the chamber, and did not speak one word to each other.

He noted idly that the females had cleaned up the old robes, dismantled the meat-drying rack, and neatened the place up.

Then kinfolk sat around the fire to tell over the names of ancestors, to honor those who had achieved g’ status or Haghood among them, to relax standards of neatness and laundering (in the absence of whomever or whatever might have been, at other times, responsible for neatening and laundering), and to give amusing gifts and consume traditional foods prepared by their own hands while telling old stories around the tile stoves.

Then kinfolk sat around the fire to tell over the names of ancestors, to honor those who had achieved g' status or Haghood among them, to relax standards of neatness and laundering (in the absence of whomever or whatever might have been, at other times, responsible for neatening and laundering), and to give amusing gifts and consume traditional foods prepared by their own hands while telling old stories around the tile stoves.

Inside, I found the lopping shears I knew had to be there, since her hedges were as neatened as the row of stones.

Pam, who had turned her back, was busily neatening a stack of paint thinner in an obvious effort to act casual.

The one thing she was most terrified she would see was desire, so she pulled her hand from his and began making the feminine motions of neatening herself: pushing her hair out of her face, straightening her skirt, blotting under her eyes to remove any melted mascara.

A barrow was laden with tools and they pushed it to a long arbor walk overgrown with fruit vines and edged with flowers, where things needed a general clipping and weeding and neatening up.

He checked the room one last time, neatening knickknacks here and there.

We sat down across the desk from each other and he said it was a tragic thing that Billy had to lose out on a lot of good years remaining, and he said the estate was in very clean condition because Billy had done a lot of neatening up after he sold out his business interests, getting rid of little cats and dogs, small partnerships, shelters, tag ends of land.