From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishrefinere‧fine /rɪˈfaɪn/ ●○○ AWL verb [transitive] 1 IMPROVEto improve a method, plan, system etc by gradually making slight changes to it Car makers are constantly refining their designs.2 TIto make a substance purer using an industrial process → refinery oil refining→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
refine• The oil is piped to the coast, where it is refined.• The New Ager certainly demonstrates some of these qualities in the way that he creates and refines an original artistic fiction.• There are huge profits in growing and refining cocaine.• The dealers buy raw cocaine in the south, refine it here, and smuggle it into the north.• It was a four week course, aimed at refining our understanding of the managerial role.• The methods have been refined over the years, but not radically changed.• refined petroleum• After the first refining process the metal is washed.• Engineers are working on developing and refining the car engines.• Volvo spent three years refining the design of their new car.• The authors suggest that new experiments to refine the system parameters should be carried out to achieve real global minimum.• As they received complaints about this see-sawing, they began to refine their delegating behavior.• In future it could provide cosmologists with a firm age with which to refine their models of how the Universe was formed. 