improve

To make (something) better; to increase the value or productivity (of something).

Verb

To make (something) better; to increase the value or productivity (of something).
- Painting the woodwork will improve this house.
- Buying more servers would improve performance.
- Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses...
To become better.
- I have improved since taking the tablets.
- The error messages have improved since the last version, when they were incomprehensible.
- “My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were...
To use or employ to good purpose; to turn to profitable account.
- to improve one's time; to improve his means
- We shall especially honour God, by discharging faithfully those offices which God hath entrusted us with: by improving diligently those talents which God hath committed to us - a. 1678 (date written), Isaac Barrow,...
- [A] hint that I do not remember to have seen opened and improved […] - 1711 July 17 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “FRIDAY, July 7, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 111; republished in...

From Anglo-Norman emprouwer, from Old French en- + prou (“profit”), from Vulgar Latin prode (“advantageous, profitable”).

To disprove or make void; to refute.
- One ſayth this and a nother that / but can not agre. Nether can any of them make ſo ſtronge a reaſon vvhich a nother can not improve. - 1528 October 12 (Gregorian calendar), William Tyndale, “[Of the Sacramentes.] Of...
To disapprove of; to find fault with; to reprove; to censure.
- [W]hen he reherſed his preachinge and his doynges vnto the hye Apoſtles / they coulde improve no thinge […] - 1528 October 12 (Gregorian calendar), William Tyndale, “The .IIIJ. Senses of yͤ Scripture”, in The Obediẽce...
- You would improve his negligence, too oft to ease retir’d: […] - [1611?], Homer, “Book X”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter, →OCLC; republished as The...