The Collaborative International Dictionary
Purify \Pu"ri*fy\ (p[=u]"r[i^]*f[imac]), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Purified (p[=u]"r[i^]*f[imac]d); p. pr. & vb. n. Purifying (p[=u]"r[i^]*f[imac]"[i^]ng).] [F. purifier, L. purificare; purus pure + -ficare (in comp.) to make. See Pure, and -fy.]
To make pure or clear from material defilement, admixture, or imperfection; to free from extraneous or noxious matter; as, to purify liquors or metals; to purify the blood; to purify the air.
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Hence, in figurative uses:
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To free from guilt or moral defilement; as, to purify the heart.
And fit them so Purified to receive him pure.
--Milton. -
To free from ceremonial or legal defilement.
And Moses took the blood, and put it upon the horns of the altar, . . . and purified the altar.
--Lev. viii. 15.Purify both yourselves and your captives. -- Num. xxxi. 19.
To free from improprieties or barbarisms; as, to purify a language.
--Sprat.
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Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of purify English)
WordNet
adj. serving to purge or rid of sin; "purgatorial rites" [syn: purgatorial, purging]
freeing from noxious matter; "filtration is a purifying agent" [ant: adulterating]
acting like an antiseptic [syn: cleansing]
Usage examples of "purifying".
Repentance for a wrong done, bears, like every other act, its own fruit, the fruit of purifying the heart and amending the Future, but not of effacing the Past.
Spirit of Spirits, leads back the vagrant spirit to its home, and accompanies it through the purifying processes, both real and symbolical, of its earthly transit.
One of the most precious advantages promised by their initiation was, to put a man in communion with the Gods, by purifying his soul of all the passions that interfere with that enjoyment, and dim the rays of divine light that are communicated to every soul capable of receiving them, and that imitate their purity.
According to the dogma of antiquity, the thronging forms of life are a series of purifying migrations, through which the divine principle re-ascends to the unity of its source.
Water, a test representing the purifying of the soul in the march of years, 397-u.
It is a necessary agent in depuration, or the process of purifying the animal economy, for it dissolves and holds in solution deleterious matter, which in this state may be expelled from the body.
The medicines to remedy this perverted condition of the blood and fluids must be alteratives which will act upon the digestive organs and tone the nutritive functions, thus enriching and purifying the blood.
It has no equal in its direct effect upon the liver, the great purifying organ of the body.
Moreover, buying the drugs in such enormous quantities, having perfect apparatus for purifying and compounding the mixture, he could not only get better articles in the first place, but present the medicine in better form and cheaper than the same mixture could possibly be obtained from any other source.
The important mystery mentioned by the Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem to him essential, and the second aim, that of purifying and regenerating himself, did not much interest him because at that moment he felt with delight that he was already perfectly cured of his former faults and was ready for all that was good.
As a purifying and cleansing lotion for wounds and sores, thymol should be mixed in the proportion of five grains thereof to an ounce of spirit of wine, an ounce of glycerine, and six ounces of water.
Otherwise there are special reasons for supposing the Tomato to be a wholesome fruit of remarkable purifying value.
Her jobs, her only jobs, were spreading the reformation throughout World and purifying and restoring the faith and keeping it pure.
Nature, kinder to his senseless ashes than ever Fortune had been to the living man, is prodigal around his grave -- unmarked and unrecorded though it be -- of her flowers and verdant grasses, of her rains that fertilize, and her purifying dews.
Los Angeles, where the enormous purifying plant distilled sea water for half of the continent.