Dress-up

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A child's game of putting on different clothes and pretending to be different people. informal, uncountable

    "One day, I happened to catch a glimpse of my daughter Annie, age three, playing dress-up with her pals at the family day care program she attends twice a week. Each child had a hat on his or her head and was pretending to be a circus clown."

Example

More examples

"Mary loves playing dress-up with her doll."

Etymology

Deverbal from dress up.

Related phrases

dress-up gamedress-up party

More for "dress-up"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.