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Allin

improvise

verbattested in dialogue

  • //ˈɪm.pɹə.vaɪz//

To make something up or invent it as one goes on; to proceed guided only by imagination, intuition, and guesswork rather than by a careful plan.

verb

  1. 1

    To make something up or invent it as one goes on; to proceed guided only by imagination, intuition, and guesswork rather than by a careful plan.

    He had no speech prepared, so he improvised.

    They improvised a simple shelter with branches and the rope they were carrying.

    She improvised a lovely solo.

    We have improvised the most charming party imaginable. The summer has come back by surprise. I own I wonder that June was not tired of us: still here is a day so sunny, that October does not know its own. The Duke of Wharton, Lord Hervey, and some two or three others, have designed a water-party in our honour.

Etymology

From French improviser; ultimately from Latin improvisus.

Forms

past tense
improvised
past participle
improvised
present participle
improvising
third person singular
improvises
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).