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clarify

verbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈklæɹ.ɪ.faɪ//
  • United Kingdom//ˈklæɹ.ə.faɪ//
  • Canada//ˈklɛɹ.ɪ.faɪ//
  • Canada//ˈklɛɹ.ə.faɪ//
  • Australia//ˈklæɹ.ɪ.fɑɪ//

To make or become clear or bright by freeing from impurities or turbidity.

verb

  1. 1

    To make or become clear or bright by freeing from impurities or turbidity.

    What's the best way to clarify cooking oil?

    Leave the wine for 24 hours and it will clarify.

  2. 2

    To make or become clear or easily understood; to explain or resolve in order to remove doubt or obscurity.

    Please clarify what you mean by this.

    Over time, the situation gradually clarified.

    To clarify his reason, to rectify his will.

    We assimilate cultural interpretations based on the value our cultural editors determine and the level of abundance we are allowed to have without violating tribal horizons. I should clarify that I am not suggesting that we are passive recipients of everything the cultural editors tell us about ourselves.

  3. 3

    obsoleteTo glorify.

Etymology

From Middle English clarifien, from Old French clarifiier, from Latin clārificō, clārificāre; clārus (“clear”) + faciō, facere (“make”). Semantically clear + -ify.

Forms

past tense
clarified
past participle
clarified
present participle
clarifying
third person singular
clarifies
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).