refine

Definitions

1. 1.2. 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.
2. 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. 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. 4.To affect nicety or subtilty in thought or language. "He makes another paragraph about our refining in controversy." Atterbury.

Source: Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).

Synonyms

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• What does "refine" mean?

Reverse-dictionary questions

Definition-first questions whose answer is refine.

• What is 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 called?
• What is to affect nicety or subtilty in thought or language. "He makes another paragraph about our refining in controversy." Atterbury called?