diff --git a/lisp/progmodes/tcl.el b/lisp/progmodes/tcl.el
index 33aad2d39f..5dd02c1367 100644
--- a/lisp/progmodes/tcl.el
+++ b/lisp/progmodes/tcl.el
@@ -410,7 +410,8 @@ tcl-font-lock-keywords
 (defconst tcl-syntax-propertize-function
   (syntax-propertize-rules
    ;; Mark the few `#' that are not comment-markers.
-   ("[^;[{ \t\n][ \t]*\\(#\\)" (1 ".")))
+   ("[^;[{ \t\n][ \t]*\\(#\\)" (1 "."))
+   ((concat "\\_<" (regexp-opt tcl-builtin-list t) "\\_>" "\s*{\\([^}].*\\)}") (2 "_")))
   "Syntactic keywords for `tcl-mode'.")
 
 ;; FIXME need some way to recognize variables because array refs look
@@ -506,6 +507,7 @@ tcl-set-font-lock-keywords
          ;; number of "namespace::" qualifiers.  A leading "::" refers
          ;; to the global namespace.
          '("\\${\\([^}]+\\)}" 1 font-lock-variable-name-face)
+         '("{\\([^}]+\\)}" 1 font-lock-string-face)
          '("\\$\\(\\(?:::\\)?\\(?:[[:alnum:]_]+::\\)*[[:alnum:]_]+\\)"
            1 font-lock-variable-name-face)
          '("\\(?:\\s-\\|^\\|\\[\\)set\\s-+{\\([^}]+\\)}"