polished

1. 1
   adjective

   Made smooth, glossy, or shiny through rubbing or polishing.

   The polished marble floor gleamed under the lobby lights.

   After hours of work, the silver candlesticks looked perfectly polished.

   Similarshiny, glossy, burnished, gleaming, lustrous

   Oppositedull, rough, tarnished

2. 2
   adjective

   Refined and elegant in manner, style, or performance.

   The diplomat's polished delivery impressed even her critics.

   Years of training gave the dancers a polished, effortless grace.

   Similarrefined, sophisticated, elegant, accomplished, smooth

   Oppositecrude, rough, clumsy, unrefined

   Note

   Here refinement is imagined as a smoothed surface. What the shiny physical sense does to wood or silver, this sense does to manners and work, implying that roughness or coarseness has been rubbed away. Gibbon and Austen apply it to people and whole societies: "the polished and enlightened," "polished society." It also praises finished work, as in a polished performance, and it is fully comparable: more polished, most polished.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of polish.

   The jeweler polished each gemstone with great care.

   By the time guests arrived, the silverware had been polished to a shine.

   Note

   One form does two jobs. It is the simple past (she polished the silver) and the participle used after have or be (it had been polished). It carries every sense of the verb, from rubbing a surface bright to refining away imperfections. Capitalized Polish, meaning "of Poland," shares the base spelling, but it is an adjective that never takes -ed, so lowercase polished always belongs to the verb.

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