Definition of "perk up" [perk up]

• To become more lively or enthusiastic or upright. (verb)

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• "We perk up our ears the same way we did in literature class only a few hours earlier when Ludmila the Couch Legs began to spin her love stories."
• "Disconcertingly, he appears to perk up at the sight of me—or to perk up as much as a guy whose eyelids are perpetually half closed can."
• "No false religion ever yet in the world did enthrone itself in the minds of men enjoying a civil sovereignty over the persons of others, but it therewithal commanded them, under pain of neglect and contempt of itself, to crush any underling worship that would perk up in inferior consciences."