subtilize

American  

[suht-l-ahyz, suhb-tuh-lahyz] / ˈsʌt lˌaɪz, ˈsʌb təˌlaɪz /

especially British, subtilise

verb (used with object)

subtilized, subtilizing

1. to elevate in character; sublimate.

2. to make (the mind, senses, etc.) keen or discerning; sharpen.

3. to introduce subtleties into or argue subtly about.

4. to make thin, rare, or more fluid or volatile; refine.

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verb (used without object)

subtilized, subtilizing

1. to make subtle distinctions or to argue subtly.

subtilize British  

/ ˈsʌtɪˌlaɪz /

verb

1. (tr) to bring to a purer state; refine

2. to debate subtly

3. (tr) to make (the mind, etc) keener

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Other Word Forms

• subtilization
  noun
• subtilizer
  noun
• supersubtilized
  adjective

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Etymology

Origin of subtilize

1585–95; < Medieval Latin subtīlizāre, equivalent to subtīl ( is ) subtle + -izāre -ize

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

subtilize subtilized subtilizing

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

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

However abstractly they speculate and subtilize, there is always an undigested bone of man-god, god-man, and vicarious atonement in the theological stomach.

From Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being a Comparison of the Old and New Testament Myths and Miracles with those of the Heathen Nations of Antiquity Considering also their Origin and Meaning by T. W. Doane

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 W. H. (William Henry) Hudson

But Aristotle did not consider the "pneuma," which thus reached the interior of the blood-vessels, to be exactly the same thing as air—it was "a subtilized and condensed air."

From Fathers of Biology by Charles McRae

In the past all his experiences were refined, subtilized, transfigured.

From Hazlitt on English Literature An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature by Jacob Zeitlin

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

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

But Mr. Arabin went on subtilizing, regarding neither the archdeacon's raillery nor Eleanor's defence.

From Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

The risk in subtilizing stage character lies just here.

From How to See a Play by Sir Richard Francis Burton

The scene is transfigured before their eyes: it is as if the heavens had opened, and inundated all its features with a celestial subtilizing aura.

From Essays Æsthetical by George H. (George Henry) Calvert

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

"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

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