MEANING
1. The improvement of something through small, careful changes, or a change made for that purpose.
2. The removal of unwanted material from a substance to make it purer or suitable for use.
3. Polished manners and taste associated with education, social training, or attention to style.
Use it for
describing a method improved without wholesale replacement; explaining a more precise version of a model; distinguishing incremental improvement from a new frameworkDistinguishes incremental improvement from purification and from socially attributed polish. Academic functions: Research / Methodology.
Words that belong together
- methodological refinement
- refinement of a model
- further refinement
On the page
The revised coding rules represent a methodological refinement rather than a new research design.
Further refinement of the categories reduced ambiguity in borderline cases.
The report distinguishes extraction of the raw material from its subsequent refinement.
Refinement can change purity without creating a different basic substance.
The novel presents refinement as a marker of class rather than a guarantee of honesty.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- refinement
Usage notes
Countable or uncountable for an improvement: refinement/refinements. Purification and polished manners are usually uncountable. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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