What is the meaning of diy: What Does DIY Mean? – DIY Definition and What It Stands For

DIY Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster

ˌdē-(ˌ)ī-ˈwī

often attributive

: do-it-yourself

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

There’s more to raising chickens than buying a backyard coop (or going the DIY coop route) and decorating it with some charming amenities.

—Katie Bowlby, Country Living, 12 July 2023

While the TikToks vary in production value, some are incredibly cinematic, using drone shots, CGI and DIY Grimace costumes.

—Astrid Kayembe, Los Angeles Times, 12 July 2023

Hire a lawn company to do core aeration, which pulls up plugs of soil a few inches long; DIY aerators just poke solid spikes (like the tines of a fork) into the ground, which doesn’t actually introduce oxygenand can actually compress the soil.

—Arricca Elin Sansone, House Beautiful, 11 July 2023

Tony Carrick Tony Carrick is a full-time freelance writer who specializes in technology, home improvement, DIY, home security, and outdoor recreation.

—Tony Carrick, Popular Mechanics, 9 July 2023

Her red, white, and blue outfit is not only cute and comfy, but super simple to DIY.

—Samantha Olson, Seventeen, 6 July 2023

And for younger viewers, the style that Field pioneered and Rogers continues to champion is almost like a Gen Z fashion bible: label-savvy, impractical and yet somehow always a bit DIY.

—Rachel Tashjian, Washington Post, 4 July 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word ‘DIY. ‘ Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1955, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler

The first known use of DIY was
in 1955

See more words from the same year

Dictionary Entries Near

DIY

Dixon

DIY

Diyarbakir

See More Nearby Entries

Cite this Entry

Style

MLAChicagoAPAMerriam-Webster

“DIY.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/DIY. Accessed 25 Jul. 2023.

Copy Citation

Kids Definition

DIY

adjective

ˌdē-(ˌ)ī-ˈwī

: do-it-yourself

Last Updated:
16 Jul 2023
– Updated example sentences

Subscribe to America’s largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Merriam-Webster unabridged

null

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Wait, What does DIY mean? – Love & Renovations

October 5, 2021October 30, 2021

Home

Chances are, if you’ve found your way to my website (or any other DIY blogger’s), you know the meaning of the acronym DIY. But what if you’re new here? What if you’ve just stumbled into the DIY world and we’re all over here spouting off about projects and tools and materials and you’re just sitting there saying, “hold on a second, what does DIY mean?!”

I’m here for you, friend.

DIY is an abbreviation that means Do It Yourself.

It seems incredibly simple. And honestly, it is! But, DIY means so much more than just a quick house project or furniture project. DIY can refer to so many different things! In fact, when you hear the word you may think of something completely different than someone else.

For example, when I hear the abbreviation DIY, I immediately think of home improvement projects, building furniture, and crafts. When it comes to the home, DIY can mean everything from making throw pillows to building your own house!

Of course, when other people think of the meaning of DIY, maybe they don’t think of anything home related at all. Maybe they think of DIY auto repair, decorating a cake, or something completely different!

In fact, if you head over to Instagram, YouTube, or Pinterest and search “DIY”, you’ll be amazed and the broad range of things you see!

Basically, DIY just means that you’re taking care of something yourself (aka: doing it yourself) rather than hiring a skilled professional to do it for you. This can apply to everything under the sun!

If you’re hanging out on my corner of the internet, you’ll find that I share mostly DIY house and home related things.

Here are some DIY projects from my archives that would be great for any beginner to try!

Beginner-level DIY {Do it Yourself} Projects

DIY Faux Wood Accent Wall
Simple DIY Floating Shelves
How to Install Board & Batten
DIY Blanket Ladder
Easy DIY Faux Aged Lamp

If you want some more resources to get started on your DIY journey, you can also click here to see all of my beginner guides – they cover everything from how to use power tools to how to paint a room!

Are there any other acronyms in the world of DIY that you’d like to know more about?

Why do educators require parents to do crafts with children: a frank opinion of a kindergartener’s mother – September 27, 2021

org/Person”> Photo: Daria Nevzorova

Sooner or later, every parent goes through this: in five years of attending kindergarten, a child will have to make more than one craft (this fate will not bypass you even at school). On the Day of Preschool Education Workers, 74.RU journalist and kindergartener’s mother Daria Nevzorova in an author’s column asks why teachers persistently ask children and their parents to do creative homework and who ultimately needs all this.

Don’t know what to do with your family on the weekend? Ask the teachers! They will help you effectively forget about Sunday sofas and evening TV shows. And they will probably come up with a more interesting lesson for you, plunging into the abyss of the curriculum with the obligatory “stimulation of joint family activities” (this is how all homework for children is recorded in it) and urgent preparations for the next checks. Especially if you do not turn off notifications in parental chats at night, and your child reverently completes all the tasks received in kindergarten. After all, you can’t just take and ignore an exhibition on the theme of summer, the autumn festival or the annual New Year’s toy competition.

Probably, every parent at least once was in the place of that father of the student from the joke, who at three o’clock in the morning, piercing acorns in the process of preparing crafts for the competition, thought to call his son’s teacher and ask if she was sleeping. And when else to give children assignments, if not on the eve of their deadline? A burning deadline can work miracles of creativity.

Tight deadlines require desperate decisions

Photo: 74.RU reader

How many new things you will discover literally in everything that surrounds you! Distinguish natural material from junk with your eyes closed? Active creative activity will pump you and not such skills. And now you are already catching yourself thinking what marvelous game you can turn into jars, lids, cardboard boxes and other rubbish that you are going to send to the trash can right now. And you think: should you send it or save it until better craft times?

I have an unequivocal approach to kindergarten creative tasks: if a task is given to a child, then the child should do it, even if with the help of parents. That is why the next message in the parent chat launches a new quest in our family: to come up with something that a six-year-old child can actively participate in creating, find source materials and bring it all together.

If you have not been to the Fairytale Path yet, be sure to go there with your child

Photo: Daria Nevzorova

By Monday, everyone needs to make crafts with the children from natural materials, but at home only a salad from natural materials is in the refrigerator? What is not a reason to go for a walk together. This is how the Friday message of the educators sent us one of the weekends to Chelyabinsk Forest – an unlimited source of material for children’s creativity. And during this hike, we managed to:

spend several hours in the fresh, pine-scented air;
discover the “Fairytale Path” in the forest and remember with your child the stories of the characters of Russian folk tales;
arrange a photo session in the forest;
wind 10 thousand steps among the trees three times;
test a new playground in the forest;
discover a new coffee shop for family snacks;
bring home a bag of cones, sticks, acorns (the academic year, like the curriculum, is long).

The result of family creativity can become common pride (but this is not certain). The main thing is to enjoy the time spent with each other

Photo: reader 74.RU

A fascinating family evening in the company of pliers, paints and glue awaited us all. And five stages from indignation to resignation to the necessity of the process. But you know what? In the end, I sincerely wanted to say “thank you” to the teachers for all this. For the fact that they care about us and our children, who, instead of burying themselves in the screens of phones or TVs, spend at least a few hours on a common cause surrounded by family.

September 04, 2020, 08:00

You shouldn’t be doing this! 4 reasons not to help your child with homework
August 14, 2020, 08:00

“You live together for 11 years”: what parents of first-graders need to agree on now
February 04, 2020, 12:40

obsolete by you – and the children are simply not interested in us”
October 04, 2019, 10:20

“Mom, why is there no dad?”: 74.RU journalist about family values in cartoons and children’s books
September 27, 2019, 09:18

For mom and dad: Chelyabinsk kindergarten teachers starred in a sincere photo shoot
September 27, 2017, 13:16 and Chelyabinsk kindergartens are working with a creative mind

Daria Nevzorova

special correspondent

— about family values in cartoons and children’s books

October 04, 2019, 00:00

Vegans, don’t brainwash: 74. ru journalist on why she eats animal “corpses”

March 20, 2019, 00:00

Read the recommendations and write to us!

KindergartenCraftsTeachersChildrenFamily

Did you see a typo? Select the fragment and press Ctrl+Enter

COMMENTS164

Read all comments

Guest

why are they so important and who should do them? Big educational program for tired parents

And if only this happened in autumn! Next in line is a New Year’s toy contest, a postcard contest for February 23 and March 8, Easter eggs (yes, atheists will also be forced), a humorous craft for the first of April, a space craft for Cosmonautics Day and an exhibition of drawings for May 9.

How did a stuffed beaver and a life-size model of Saratov made of spruce cones suddenly become a parental concern?

Why in all these wonderful exhibitions and competitions where children were supposed to show their skills, the competition takes place exclusively between parents?

How did we get into this race? Where did this cult of endless crafts come from, and what will happen if we abandon it?

We tried to answer these and many other questions.

Every parent is aware that there are many competitions in kindergarten and school. Where do they come from and how do they differ from competitions that we once participated in?

In the USSR, there were two traditional occasions for exhibitions and competitions of children’s art: holidays (New Year, Victory Day) and memorable dates (100 years since the death of Pushkin, 50 years of October). There were also major all-Union annual competitions, which were announced, for example, by major newspapers and children’s magazines.

Competitions from the times of the USSR were notable for their scale and there were not many of them. The selection was strict, not every drawing or craft could get on them.

Interesting on the topic

You celebrate somehow wrong

In the 90s, their number increased simply due to the fact that many institutions that had nothing to do with children at all began to hold exhibitions and festivals of children’s creativity for the sake of advertising. At the same time, there was no special selection of works – they sent it, and okay. The organizers stopped monitoring the independence of the task.

The selection system for all-Russian competitions, however, remained the same: all kindergartens (or schools) organized competitions-exhibitions, the best works were sent to a regional or city competition, the best works from this stage went to the regional, and the best ones reached the all-Russian level.

Vain parents began to appear who did the work for the children. However, this phenomenon was not massive, because, to tell the truth, it was more important for adults in the 90s to feed their children than to send a carved pumpkin to the competition.

With the widespread use of the Internet, there are even more competitions. Now on the Web, anyone can throw a call and organize a competition, and parents and teachers can choose what they want to participate in – also online.

Contests of crafts made from natural materials, bouquets, products created in the classroom were held as part of introducing children to work and creative activities. They highly valued independent work.

Most of the handicraft competitions were held in autumn, for the harvest festival. We conducted excursions to nature in order to collect materials for labor lessons, and collected herbariums. They organized competitions on the amount of collected material.

In addition, teachers received additional materials for lessons from schoolchildren and their parents. The teachers asked the students to bring cereals for application, cones, acorns, beans, dry peas, flower petals, mountain ash – something that is stored for a long time. Of course, not everything from one student, but who can do what.

All this was kept in the classroom and replenished as needed. Crafts were made at labor lessons or circles from what was in the closet. They worked on samples made by teachers, studying different techniques.

In September, preparing for the exhibition, children planned their projects at labor lessons, teachers could suggest something if the child was in a creative impasse. Then, in the classroom, they made their own work.

Sometimes, if the craft was difficult, they could stay to finish it after the lesson. If parents were involved, then only as a source of materials. For the school-wide and district competitions, the children chose the best crafts themselves.

Crafts and drawings were supposed to reflect the artistic and labor skills that the child had mastered. They even laughed at those who handed in works that were not their own. A simple school joke of the 80s said: “And I have an entry in my diary:“ Mom is five. ” The teachers were funny.

I myself signed a special order from the RONO, which stated that the labor of parents should not be abused in the preparation of children’s creative competitions. That is, the involvement of parents in such competitions was not only not typical, but also punishable. But we ourselves understood that parents have something to do without school crafts.

Therefore, I was very surprised when my three-year-old granddaughter, or rather her mother, was given the task of participating in a craft competition. What’s the point if the parent does the work? Even if the work wins, everyone will know that it was not made by a child from the younger group of the kindergarten.

The tasks of creative education are still indicated as involving children in work, developing their fine motor skills, creativity, perseverance, creating a situation of success (when you did not know how and could not, and then suddenly – once! – and did it).

Exhibitions are considered one of the ways to realize the creative potential of children.

When the competition is announced, the order for its holding must indicate that the work can be done by the child alone or together with the parent.

All contests are sent to us by the Education Committee of our city, the Regional Education Committee and the Ministry of Education. In addition, kindergartens (at least ours) actively cooperate with the traffic police and the fire department. They also have competitions of drawings and crafts.

Participation is absolutely voluntary, the attitude of the educator towards children who did not take part does not change. Another thing is that children are offended that others receive diplomas and incentives, but they do not.

We always say that co-creation unites, and all these competitions are designed to improve the connection between parents and children. There are too many gadgets around now, working on a craft together is a great way to bond with your child.

Many parents actually like to draw, paint and sculpt with their child. Someone collects puzzles together, someone draws by numbers, someone folds origami. In their classes, fathers and mothers proceed from what is at home, what mood they and the child have, whether everyone is so tired that they fall asleep on the go.

When at nine o’clock in the evening a hypothetical second-grader announces that tomorrow they have to bring crafts, the cap is predictably torn off from the parents. There are no materials in the house, everyone has no time, there are no ideas in their heads. As a result, the forgetful child goes to bed (because sleep is important!), and the rest of the family stays to work on a hedgehog from a bottle and cones.

It’s even more difficult with kindergarteners: yes, the competition is announced in advance, but you can’t completely entrust the work to a two-year-old, because then he will lose. So parents compete with each other, and in their crafts it’s good if at least one piece is glued by a child.

There are several versions:

Parents have nothing to do, so they stick around for their children. If you look at the discussions of all these competitions, the most common thought is: “we did everything ourselves, because our parents worked.” But they still work!

A child who does not systematically participate in competitions will be treated worse. It all depends on the educational institution, but even if the attitude becomes worse, contests will not be called out loud as a reason. Therefore, parents tend to “lay straws” everywhere.

A child who does not receive certificates, diplomas and incentives becomes very upset when they are given to his comrades. This is true, and it is difficult for a child, especially a small one, to explain why you do not want to participate in the competition for the best Easter egg. Psychologists say that making crafts and participating in exhibitions can give the first experience of success and recognition. It is important.

Self-realization through children. Like, parents want their child to be the best and therefore engage in fraud.

Pressure of authority and reputation. On the one hand, the educator or teacher tearfully asks to take part in the exhibition. On the other hand, you have already won three competitions, and your family has a reputation for being creative and active. Combo! It will be unpleasant for you to let down a teacher and lose your honorary status.

The remuneration system for teachers is built in such a way that the salary of a teacher and educator directly depends on his category. The higher the category, the higher the salary. One of the conditions for successful certification is confirmation of one’s success as a teacher: copies of certificates and diplomas received by students, participation in competitions as a jury member, work with parents.

The more certificates, the higher the chances of confirmation or upgrade. In addition, they will strive to get into the class of a teacher with a good reputation.

With the highest category, you can get a promotion, and thereby improve the status of even the educational institution itself. Who will blame people for wanting to live better? In their place, everyone would subscribe to one hundred mandatory and two hundred additional competitions, exhibitions and reviews.

We often write that it is important for parents to take good care of themselves and rest on time. Making children’s crafts for the competition at night clearly does not fit into the concept of “rest”. So if you unexpectedly learned from your student about the competition, calmly explain that you need to report such things on time. And tomorrow – sorry, my friend, you will be left without diplomas.

You can try to agree with the parents of other kindergartners that neither you nor any of them will do all the work for the child. Thus, there will be less reason to be upset about judging at competitions.