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:
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
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
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
However abstractly they speculate and subtilize, there is always an undigested bone of man-god, god-man, and vicarious atonement in the theological stomach.
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
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
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
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
Except that the houses had receded and faded, and the passers-by were subtilized into unnoticeable ghosts!
From The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
In them there is no subtilizing of human affections, of human fears, or of human faith.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863 by Various
By subtilizing, the modern theologian becomes as little intelligible to himself as to others.
From Superstition In All Ages (1732) Common Sense by Anna Knoop
The risk in subtilizing stage character lies just here.
From How to See a Play by Sir Richard Francis Burton
But Mr. Arabin went on subtilizing, regarding neither the archdeacon's raillery nor Eleanor's defence.
From Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
These were concessions to a ruling mode,—concessions the more readily made, owing to their being in complete harmony with the strong subtilizing and allegorizing tendencies of Dante's own mind.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 15, January, 1859 by Various
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.
