What does "refine" mean?
Refine: 2. To purify from what is gross, coarse, vulgar, inelegant, low, and the like; to make elegant or exellent; to polish; as, to refine the manners, the language, the style, the taste, the intellect, or the moral feelings. Love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges. Milton.
Additional senses
- 2.To become pure; to be cleared of feculent matter. So the pure, limpid stream, when foul with stains, Works itself clear, and, as it runs, refines. Addison.
- 3.To improve in accuracy, delicacy, or excellence. Chaucer refined on Boccace, and mended his stories. Dryden. But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! How the style refines! Pope.
- 4.To affect nicety or subtilty in thought or language. "He makes another paragraph about our refining in controversy." Atterbury.
Sources
- Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).
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- Published: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00 · Modified: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00