refine
See also: refiné
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ɹɪˈfaɪn/
- Rhymes: -aɪn
Verb
refine (third-person singular simple present refines, present participle refining, simple past and past participle refined)
- (transitive) To purify; reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities.
- 2013 August 3, “Yesterday’s fuel”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
- The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. […] It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led to a shortage of whale blubber. Other liquids produced in the refining process, too unstable or smoky for lamplight, were burned or dumped.
- to refine gold
- to refine iron
- to refine wine
- to refine sugar
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- (intransitive) To become pure; to be cleared of impure matter.
- (transitive) To purify of coarseness, vulgarity, inelegance, etc.; to polish.
- to refine someone's manners
- to refine a language
- a refined style
- to refine one's tastes
- (transitive, intransitive) To improve in accuracy, delicacy, or excellence.
- 1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume I, chapter 9:
- My dear Harriet, you must not refine too much upon this charade.—You will betray your feelings improperly, if you are too conscious and too quick, and appear to affix more meaning, or even quite all the meaning which may be affixed to it.
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- (transitive) To make nice or subtle.
- to refine thought
- to refine someone's language
Related terms
Translations
to reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities; to free from dross or alloy
to purify from what is gross, coarse, vulgar, inelegant, low, and the like; to make elegant or excellent; to polish
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to become pure; to be cleared of feculent matter
to improve in accuracy, delicacy, or excellence
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to affect nicety or subtlety in thought or language
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Further reading
- refine in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
- refine in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
Portuguese
Spanish
Verb
refine
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