The Collaborative International Dictionary
Improve \Im*prove"\, v. i.
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To grow better; to advance or make progress in what is desirable; to make or show improvement; as, to improve in health.
We take care to improve in our frugality and diligence.
--Atterbury. To advance or progress in bad qualities; to grow worse. ``Domitian improved in cruelty.''
--Milner.-
To increase; to be enhanced; to rise in value; as, the price of cotton improves.
To improve on or To improve upon, to make useful additions or amendments to, or changes in; to bring nearer to perfection; as, to improve on the mode of tillage.
Usage examples of "to improve upon".
It was intentionally invented to improve upon an existing technology (basically, Edison's Gramophone).
It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventive law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.
I was grateful for his instruction, and I sought to improve upon iL Interestingly, I found that I was pleased to touch him.
I was grateful for his instruction, and I sought to improve upon it.
Now it will be up to their wives to improve upon them, if they ever marry, that is.
The form was mutilated by two second-handers who assumed the right to improve upon that which they had not made and could not equal.
And much more about getting along day to day and surviving in a life-or-death situation than I did, right down to using real fur blankets because nature was sometimes hard to improve upon.
And much more about getting along day to day and surviving in a lifeor-death situation than I did, right down to using real fur blankets because nature was sometimes hard to improve upon.
The thought of anyone trying to improve upon perfection appalled him.
Above all to Elizabeth they did represent a family, however fissile and unsure, a house, and a child with the presumed determination of the parents, of her mother at least, to make one more effort to improve upon the past.