Improve

How to spell improve

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce improve

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does improve mean?

1. verbTo make something better, or to become better in quality, value, or condition.

Improve in a sentence

• The new manager hopes to improve morale across the whole team.

• Regular practice will improve your handwriting within a month.

Where does improve come from?

Language of origin: French

Improve comes ultimately from the Latin phrase in prode, meaning 'for advantage' or 'to one's profit', built on prode 'advantageous, useful', a word related to the verb prodesse 'to be of use'. It reached English through Anglo-Norman French, where amprouer meant 'to turn to profit' or 'to make better use of'. In its earliest English use, around the 1500s, it specifically meant to make land more profitable by cultivating or enclosing it, a sense still echoed in legal talk of 'improving' a property. Over time the financial and agricultural meaning broadened into the general modern idea of making anything better. The spelling settled with the silent ending -ove rather than the more obvious -oove, and the doubled-letter temptation comes from the unstressed second syllable, which sounds like 'proov'.

How the word is built

• im- (into, toward)
• prove (from Latin prode: advantageous, useful)