Other forms: livens, livened, livening
To liven is to make something more lively. Liven up the room, liven things up, the party livened up.
It nearly always appears as liven up, which works both ways — you can liven a party up and a party can liven up by itself. It suits gatherings, colours and dull afternoons. Note enliven, which is the same idea in a more formal word and takes a direct object without the up; and that liven was formed from live and life together, which is why the spelling looks unsettled.
1verblivenTo make something more lively.
“A few funny stories helped liven up the long meeting.”
liven is a making lively.
Liven comes partly from life plus -en, partly from live plus -en, and partly as a shortening of enliven. Icelandic lifna, to come alive, is from the same root.
Proto-Indo-European
*leyp-
Middle English
lyf
English
life
English, today
liven
Built from
Partly from life + -en; partly from live + -en; and partly a shortening of enliven. Cognate with Norwegian Nynorsk livna (“to quicken, come alive”), Faroese livna (“to come to life, come alive”), Icelandic lifna (“to come to life”). life comes from Middle English lyf. From Middle English lyf, from Old English līf, from Proto-West Germanic līb, from Proto-Germanic lībą (“life, body”), from lībaną (“to remain, stay, be left”), from Proto-Indo-European leyp- (“to stick, glue”). Cognate with Scots life, leif (“life”), stq Lieuw (“body”), West Frisian liif (“body”), cim laip (“body”), Dutch lijf (“body”) and leven (“life”), German Leib (“body; womb”) and Leben (“life”), Low German Lief (“body; life”), lb Leif, Läif (“body”), wym łaowa (“life”), Yiddish לײַב (“body”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish liv (“life; waist”), Faroese lív (“life”), Icelandic líf (“life”). Related to belive.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA