Emily Dickinson Lexicon

RE-FINE, v.i.

1. To improve in accuracy, delicacy, or in any thing that constitutes excellence. Chaucer refined on Boccace and mended his stories. – Dryden. Let a lord but own the happy lines, / How the wit brightens, how the sense refines! – Pope.
2. To become pure; to be cleared of feculent matter. So the pure limpid stream, when fool with stains, / Works itself clear, and as it runs, refines. – Addison.
3. To affect nicety. Men sometimes refine in speculation beyond the limits of practical truth. He makes another paragraph about our refining in controversy. – Atterbury.