subtilize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to elevate in character; sublimate.
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to make (the mind, senses, etc.) keen or discerning; sharpen.
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to introduce subtleties into or argue subtly about.
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to make thin, rare, or more fluid or volatile; refine.
verb (used without object)
verb
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(tr) to bring to a purer state; refine
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to debate subtly
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(tr) to make (the mind, etc) keener
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of subtilize
1585–95; < Medieval Latin subtīlizāre, equivalent to subtīl ( is ) subtle + -izāre -ize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
By long brooding over our recollections, we subtilize them into something akin to imaginary stuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished from it.
From The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
From Life of Chopin by Martha Elizabeth Duncan Walker Cook
However abstractly they speculate and subtilize, there is always an undigested bone of man-god, god-man, and vicarious atonement in the theological stomach.
To play with important truths, to disturb the repose of established tenets, to subtilize objections, and elude proof, is too often the sport of youthful vanity, of which maturer experience commonly repents.
From The Works of Samuel Johnson, Volume 06 Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons by Samuel Johnson
And when the soul has subtilized itself, until it can penetrate them, it arrives at the word, that is, at perfect will; and then its motion ceases, and its joy remains.
From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 3 by Hamilton Wright Mabie
In analyzing the idea of disorder thus subtilized, we shall see that it represents nothing at all, and at the same time the problems that have been raised around it will vanish.
From Creative Evolution by Arthur Mitchell
Calvert says: "Ladyhood is an emanation from the heart subtilized by culture;" giving as two requisites for the highest breeding, transmitted qualities and the culture of good training.
From Our Deportment Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society by John H. Young
Every page bears the impress of thought, but it is thought subtilized, and redolent of poetry.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859 by Various
He is neither subtilized into an idea by pure thinking nor civilized into a gentleman by social laws and prejudices.
From Tragic Sense Of Life by J. E. Crawford (John Ernest Crawford) Flitch
Theosophy—and a large share of what is called theology—is simply a refining and subtilizing of mythology.
From The Next Step in Religion An Essay toward the Coming Renaissance by Roy Wood Sellars
The risk in subtilizing stage character lies just here.
From How to See a Play by Sir Richard Francis Burton
By subtilizing every thing, the modern theologian becomes as unintelligible to himself as to others.
From Good Sense by Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach
But Mr. Arabin went on subtilizing, regarding neither the archdeacon's raillery nor Eleanor's defence.
From Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
"Seest thou not," adds Philo, in the same spirit of subtilizing being into power, and dividing the Logos into two.
From Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
