I will bring the third part through the fire, and
will refine them as silver is refined. --Zech. xiii.
9.
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.
Syn: To purify; clarify; polish; ennoble.
So the pure, limpid stream, when foul with stains,
Works itself clear, and, as it runs, refines.
--Addison.
2. 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.
3. To affect nicety or subtilty in thought or language. ``He
makes another paragraph about our refining in
controversy.'' --Atterbury.