refining

refining is the present participle and gerund of refine.

Meaning of refine

refine (third-person singular simple present refines, present participle refining, simple past and past participle refined)

(transitive) To purify; reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities.
- to refine gold
(intransitive) To become pure; to be cleared of impure matter.
(transitive) To purify of coarseness, vulgarity, inelegance, etc.; to polish.
- to refine someone's manners
(ambitransitive) To improve in accuracy, delicacy, or excellence.
- My dear Harriet, you must not refine too much upon this charade.—You will betray your feelings improperly, if you are too conscious and too quick, and appear to affix more meaning, or even quite all the meaning which may be affixed to it.1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume I, chapter 9
(transitive) To make nice or subtle.
- to refine thought

refining (countable and uncountable, plural refinings)

Refinement (process of refining)
- Then after that process which Culverwel describes as so many strainings, refinings, and clarifyings, the mind is prepared for a true insight into the real nature of the world by way of intuition.1931, John de Boer, The Theory of Knowledge of the Cambridge Platonists, page 64

plural	refinings

What does refining mean?: Refining means refinement (process of refining).
What is refining the present participle and gerund of?: Refining is the present participle and gerund of refine.
What part of speech is refining?: Refining is a noun.
What is the plural of refining?: The plural of refining is refinings.

Adapted from Wiktionary: refining (page history and authors); refine (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “refining.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/refining. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.