brace up

present singular third person braces up · participle present bracing up · participle past braced up · past braced up

1. transitivebusinessTo strengthen with bracing material.

   Ed wired the house, dug a basement with pick and shovel, braced it up, bricked it, and installed a furnace and a coal chute […]

   2007, Robert Coram, American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day

2. intransitiveTo become more optimistic.
3. ambitransitiveTo strengthen (oneself), become stronger or more resilient.

   1 more example

   The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;[…]. Our table in the dining-room became again the abode of scintillating wit and caustic repartee, Farrar bracing up to his old standard, and the demand for seats in the vicinity rose to an animated competition.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC