refine

[Re*fine·]

When you refine something, you make it better. Whether it's sugar or an essay, refining it requires fixing its flaws.

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To reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities; to free from dross or alloy; to separate from extraneous matter; to purify; to defecate; as, to refine gold or silver; to refine iron; to refine wine or sugar.

Verb
make more complex, intricate, or richer; "refine a design or pattern"

Verb
make more precise or increase the discriminatory powers of; "refine a method of analysis"; "refine the constant in the equation"

Verb
attenuate or reduce in vigor, strength, or validity by polishing or purifying; "many valuable nutrients are refined out of the foods in our modern diet"

Verb
improve or perfect by pruning or polishing; "refine one''s style of writing"

Verb
reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; separate from extraneous matter or cleanse from impurities; "refine sugar"

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Verb
treat or prepare so as to put in a usable condition; "refine paper stock"; "refine pig iron"; "refine oil"

v. t.
To reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities; to free from dross or alloy; to separate from extraneous matter; to purify; to defecate; as, to refine gold or silver; to refine iron; to refine wine or sugar.

v. t.
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.

v. i.
To become pure; to be cleared of feculent matter.

v. i.
To improve in accuracy, delicacy, or excellence.

v. i.
To affect nicety or subtilty in thought or language.

Refine

Re*fine" (r?*f?n"), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Refined (-find"); p. pr. & vb. n. Refining.] [Pref. re- + fine to make fine: cf. F. raffiner.] 1. To reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities; to free from dross or alloy; to separate from extraneous matter; to purify; to defecate; as, to refine gold or silver; to refine iron; to refine wine or sugar.

I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined.

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.

Syn. -- To purify; clarify; polish; ennoble.

Refine

Re*fine", v. i. 1. 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.

2. To improve in accuracy, delicacy, or excellence.

Chaucer refined on Boccace, and mended his stories.

But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! How the style refines!

3. To affect nicety or subtilty in thought or language. "He makes another paragraph about our refining in controversy." Atterbury.

To reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities; to free from dross or alloy; to separate from extraneous matter; to purify; to defecate; as, to refine gold or silver; to refine iron; to refine wine or sugar.

To become pure; to be cleared of feculent matter.

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Usage Examples

I hope to refine music, study it, try to find some area that I can unlock. I don't quite know how to explain it but it's there. These can't be the only notes in the world, there's got to be other notes some place, in some dimension, between the cracks on the piano keys.

To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

Misspelled Form

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Other Usage Examples

I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on.

Sure, science involves trial and error. Scientists refine theories each day. But as they do, they help us grasp more clearly the wonders of the world and the universe.

The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.

I think that technology has both introduced new sounds but also allowed an increasingly painterly approach to recording music as you can now paint over what you've done and more and more refine an existing performance.