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:
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
However abstractly they speculate and subtilize, there is always an undigested bone of man-god, god-man, and vicarious atonement in the theological stomach.
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
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
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
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)
“Half subtilized to chyle, the liquid food Readiest obeys th’ assimilating powers.”
From The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual by Kitchiner, William
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 Mitchell, Arthur
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.
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
By subtilizing every thing, the modern theologian becomes as unintelligible to himself as to others.
From Good Sense by Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
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 Sellars, Roy Wood
And because that reality must weigh more heavily on him than her, she was trying to defend him too, against himself, to force on him, against himself, her own subtilizing, justifying view.
From The Divine Fire by Sinclair, May
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
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.
