improve

verb

1. (transitive)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 they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.”

2. (intransitive)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 known your life would not be worth a curse.””

3. (dated)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] hint that I do not remember to have seen opened and improved […]”

   “How doth the little busy bee / Improve each shining hour.”

   “[T]he court has alſo an opportunity, which it ſeldom fails to improve, […]”

4. (obsolete)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.”

5. (obsolete)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 […]”

   “You would improve his negligence, too oft to ease retir’d: […]”