Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. Excessive refinement.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. Excessive refinement.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Excessive refinement; refinement with excess of subtlety or affectation of nicety.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Examples
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Hume warned that overrefinement, which is born of excessive luxury, is the most extreme danger to taste and national sensibility.
The Ruins of Empire: Nationalism, Art, and Empire in Hemans's Modern Greece
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Marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement
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Paradox - ically, Gothic aberration might stem not solely from rusticity and lack of cultivation but also from perverse overrefinement, as in the phenomena we now generally regard as baroque.
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Little Fuzzy had known exactly what he wanted when he'd started making that thing, he'd kept on until it was as perfect as possible, and had stopped short of spoiling it by overrefinement.
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a most attentive observer of men, even at court, where a certain varnish of overrefinement conceals nearly all individual features.
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"worn out," but today "effete" is more likely to suggest overrefinement, weakness of character, snobbery, and effeminacy.
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