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say it: ruh-FAHYN
refine is a verb meaning "improve or perfect by pruning or polishing". It carries 6 recorded senses.
“refine a design or pattern”
treat or prepare so as to put in a usable condition
“refine paper stock”
“refine pig iron”
“refine oil”
attenuate or reduce in vigor, strength, or intensity by polishing or purifying
“many valuable nutrients are refined out of the foods in our modern diet”
make more precise or increase the discriminatory powers of
“refine a method of analysis”
“refine the constant in the equation”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for refine come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.