✅  Better and improve both mean to make something more satisfying or more desirable (Better your chances; improve your skills).

✅  Improve is typically used when you’re making something more satisfying by meeting a need (Conditions improved after we got the coffee machine).

✅  Better often means to increase the good qualities that something has. Improve implies a worse starting position than better (better your grades to all A’s; improve your grades from C’s to B’s).

✅  To improve yourself means to seek more education or knowledge, whereas to better yourself refers to getting a higher salary or advancing to a higher social class.

Improve your vocabulary with these synonyms for better.

✅  Complete is the best word to describe something with all its elements or parts (The set was complete).

✅  Intact is the best word to emphasize that something is in its original condition, including being complete, especially when it might be surprising or noteworthy to be that way (The parcel arrived intact; Even after all those years, her memory remained intact).

✅  Intact more often describes physical items. It’s better to use intact rather than complete when you want to emphasize that something physical has survived through difficult circumstances (The boat remained intact after the storm).

✅  Both intact and complete can refer to intangible things like arguments or explanations (Her reasoning was intact; His argument was complete). Complete can also imply that something has been finished (He gave a complete explanation of what happened).

Try using Grammar Coach to write a sentence describing an intact historical artifact.

✅  Tool is the general word for any kind of handheld object that helps you do things, especially physical or manual labor (garden tool; kitchen tool).

✅  A utensil is a kind of tool, typically one used to prepare or eat food (kitchen utensil). The word utensil, however, does not necessarily refer to all tools. For example, you wouldn’t say garden utensil without getting a few odd looks!

✅  Additionally, tool can be used figuratively to refer to anything, including people, that is being used by someone in a position of power to exercise that power (The prime minister was a tool of the king).

By now you should have all the tools you need to appreciate these synonyms for utensil.