1834 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus iii. x, in Fraser's Mag. Aug. 189/2 We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and over-refining.

1888 Mind 13 167 I choose an instance of extreme simplicity, though aware it may lay me open to the charge of over-refining.

1920 Classical Philol. 15 397 This leads to overrefining on what I think could be shown to be normal Greek usage.

1962 C. C. Collins & G. R. Collins tr. U. Conrads & H. G. Sperlich Archit. of Fantasy 6 These so-called freakish ideas are concerned with something much more fundamental..for the architecture of the future than the exquisite over-refining of accepted and already perfected forms.

2001 Irish News 1 Aug. 17 One of the reasons for this major deficiency problem is the over refining of food.

1761 A. Murphy All in Wrong i. 15 You may laugh, Sir; but I know your over-refining temper too well.

1789 F. Ames Let. 27 May in Wks. (1854) 45 Their overrefining spirit in relation to trifles.

1855 W. Bagehot Coll. Wks. (1965) I. 322 The sceptical, over-refining Toryism of Hume and Montaigne.

1883 A. Domett Ranolf & Amohia (rev. ed.) I. i. 25 The o'er-refining Orient fancy passed To dreams the maddest ever Reasoning spun.

1905 H. W. C. Davis Eng. under Normans & Angevins viii. 226 The Irish paid no tithes, and were apt to marry within degrees prohibited by the over-refining spirit of the canon law.