subtilize

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

  • verb To make subtle.
  • verb To use subtle arguments or distinctions.

Examples

  • Remember they are trying to subtilize, trying to eliminate the gross, and are trying to make everything in which the Light can function.

    The Artist and His Audience

  • But Philosophy is more than the attempt to refine and subtilize our ordinary words so as to fit them for the higher service of interpretative thought, more even than the endeavour to improve the stock of ideas no matter how come by, by which we interpret to ourselves whatever it imports us to understand.

    Progress and History

  • Almost suffocating under the oppression of repressed feelings, using art only to repeat and rehearse for himself his own internal tragedy, after having wearied emotion, he began to subtilize it.

    Life of Chopin

  • By long brooding over our recollections, we subtilize them into something akin to imaginary stuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished from it.

    The Blithedale Romance

Note

The word 'subtilize' comes from Latin.