decorate
Formsdecorates, decorating, decorated
- 1To furnish a room, object, or space with ornaments and other adornments.
Volunteers decorate the lobby with fresh garlands each December.
He decorated the float with thousands of paper roses.
Similaradorn, ornament, embellish, festoon, trim
Note
Behind it is Latin decorāre, "to adorn, distinguish, honor", built on decus, a noun meaning ornament and grace but also dignity and honor. That double meaning is why one verb can trim a tree with tinsel and also pin a medal on a soldier. The honoring sense is a second branch of the same root. Here the object is the thing adorned, and with introduces the ornaments: decorate the tree with baubles.
- 2To improve the look of a room or building's interior, as by painting or papering the walls.
They hired someone to decorate the office before the grand opening.
Each spring she decorates the cottage walls with a fresh coat of paint.
Similarrefurbish, paint, paper
Note
Unlike the ornament-adding sense, decorating here means working on the walls themselves, with paint or wallpaper. It can also stand without an object: we still haven't gotten started on decorating. Used that way, it names a whole household project rather than a single act of trimming. That is why it sits naturally beside leftover paint and moving into a new home.
- 3To honor a person by awarding a medal, ribbon, or similar mark of distinction.
Each year they decorate veterans who showed exceptional courage.
The general decorated three soldiers at the morning ceremony.
Similarhonor
Note
A soldier is decorated, not adorned. The honoring sense is at home in the passive and in the past participle used as an adjective, as in a decorated soldier who served in three wars. It shares its Latin root with the ornament sense, so a medal is, in the word's own history, an ornament and an honor at once.
- 4To extend a method or function by attaching an additional piece of code to it.
Developers decorate the handler to measure how long each request takes.
He decorated the function with a cache so repeated calls run faster.
Similarwrap
Note
Programmers decorate methods, functions and classes. They wrap them in extra code that adds to or changes their behavior while the original definition stays untouched. The attached item may be called a decorator or an attribute, and the passive construction is common: the method decorated with this attribute. The everyday meaning still shows through, since something is added on top and the thing beneath is left as it was.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English decorat ("adorned"), from Latin decorātus, the past participle of decorō ("to adorn, distinguish, honor"). This traces back to decus ("ornament, grace, dignity, honor"), related to decor ("elegance, grace, beauty") and decet ("to befit").