The word “zhuzh” is hard to describe exactly, but it’s understood to mean generally making something better, in a particularly stylish or fabulous kind of way. If you fixed a broken window, that wouldn’t be zhuzhing it, but if you also shined it until it sparkled, added some fancy curtains, and arranged the furniture around it just so, that would be zhuzhing the window. The origin of the word (used as both a noun and a verb) is uncertain, but it possibly comes from Polari. Polari is a slang dialect (from the Italian “parlare,” meaning “to speak”) that combines elements of rhyming slang, Italianate words, and Romani slang; at its peak it was used as a kind of secret language among theater and carnival workers in mid-19th-century England.