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Pleasing to the senses; refinedly; hence, adapted to please a nice or cultivated taste; nice; fine; elegant; as, a delicate dish; delicate flavor.

s singularly pleasing. Macaulay. The men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and simple refined demeanor. Thackeray.

One who refines metals by separation. [Obs.]

Gross; low; unrefined. "Her earthy and abhorred commands." Shak.

To perfect with painstaking; to improve or refine with labor and study, or by successive operations; as, to elaborate a painting or a literary work. The sap is . . . still more elaborated and exalted as it circulates through the vessels of the plant. Arbuthnot.

act or process of producing or refining with labor; improvement by successive operations; refinement.

e of what deforms or impresses unpleasantly; grace given by art or practice; fine polish; refinement; -- said of manners, language, style, form, architecture, etc. That grace that elegance affords. Drayton. The endearing elegance of female friendship. Johnson. A trait of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine ch…

Very choice, and hence, pleasing to good taste; characterized by grace, propriety, and refinement, and the absence of every thing offensive; exciting admiration and approbation by symmetry, completeness, freedom from blemish, and the like; graceful; tasteful and highly attractive; as, elegant manners; elegant style of…

The refined spirit; the quintessence. The . . . elixir of worldly delights. South.

Formed of pure fire or light; refined beyond aërial substance; pertaining to the highest and purest region of heaven. Go, soar with Plato to the empyreal sphere. Pope. Empyreal air, oxygen gas.

es of some kind; amusement. Theatrical entertainments conducted with greater elegance and refinement. Prescott.

y; adapted to luxurious tastes; luxurious; pertaining to good eating. Courses of the most refined and epicurean dishes. Prescott. Epicurean philosophy. See Atomic philosophy, under Atomic.

operly so called, and complemental of it. Equity had been gradually shaping itself into a refined science which no human faculties could master without long and intense application. Macaulay.

The predominant qualities or virtues of a plant or drug, extracted and refined from grosser matter; or, more strictly, the solution in spirits of wine of a volatile or essential oil; as, the essence of mint, and the like. The . . . word essence . . . scarcely underwent a more complete transformation when from being the…

An affectation of excessive elegance and refinement of language; high-flown diction.

One who affects excessive refinement and elegance of language; -- applied esp. to a class of writers, in the age of Elizabeth, whose productions are marked by affected conceits and high-flown diction.

Belonging to the euphuists, or euphuism; affectedly refined.

To affect excessive refinement in language; to be overnice in expression.

To render pure or refined; to intensify or concentrate; as, to exalt the juices of bodies. With chemic art exalts the mineral powers. Pope.

The refinement or subtilization of a body, or the increasing of its virtue or principal property.