subtilize
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to elevate in character; sublimate.
-
to make (the mind, senses, etc.) keen or discerning; sharpen.
-
to introduce subtleties into or argue subtly about.
-
to make thin, rare, or more fluid or volatile; refine.
verb (used without object)
verb
-
(tr) to bring to a purer state; refine
-
to debate subtly
-
(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:
However abstractly they speculate and subtilize, there is always an undigested bone of man-god, god-man, and vicarious atonement in the theological stomach.
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 Cook, Martha Elizabeth Duncan Walker
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 Johnson, Samuel
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 Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Still, all inward life works itself out in a few simple forms, and culture cannot go very far before the religious graces reappear in it in a subtilized intellectual shape.
From English Critical Essays Nineteenth Century by Jones, Edmund David
Except that the houses had receded and faded, and the passers-by were subtilized into unnoticeable ghosts!
From The Old Wives' Tale by Bennett, Arnold
The sight of the well-ordered writing-table subtilized for a moment his sense of her desertion.
From The Return of the Prodigal by Sinclair, May
Wordsworth's pantheism is a subtilized animism, but there are moments when his feeling is like that of the child or savage when he is convinced that the flower enjoys the air it breathes.
From Far Away and Long Ago by Hudson, W. H. (William Henry)
Monsieur Pradel, it is imperative that the walls of the Abbaye should appear inscrutable, of great thickness, and yet subtilized by the mists of coming night.
From A Mummer's Tale by Roche, Charles E.
But Mr. Arabin went on subtilizing, regarding neither the archdeacon's raillery nor Eleanor's defence.
From Barchester Towers by Trollope, Anthony
The risk in subtilizing stage character lies just here.
From How to See a Play by Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Nay; in genuine biographies I had read of the subtilizing or exalting influence of some diseases on the mental powers.
From The Lifted Veil by Eliot, George
"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 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Beside it relieved me from a multitude of labours and cares, for, as I proceeded, Thomas Aquinas and his subtilizing competitors were thrown by in contempt.
From The Adventures of Hugh Trevor by Holcroft, Thomas
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.
