POLISHED

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does polished mean? 

• POLISHED (adjective)
  The adjective POLISHED has 4 senses:

1. perfected or made shiny and smooth

2. showing a high degree of refinement and the assurance that comes from wide social experience

3. (of grains especially rice) having the husk or outer layers removed

4. (of lumber or stone) to trim and smooth

  Familiarity information: POLISHED used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• POLISHED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Perfected or made shiny and smooth

Context example:

freshly polished silver

Similar:

bright; burnished; lustrous; shining; shiny (made smooth and bright by or as if by rubbing; reflecting a sheen or glow)

finished ((of skills or the products of skills) brought to or having the greatest excellence; perfected)

Also:

bright (emitting or reflecting light readily or in large amounts)

Antonym:

unpolished (not carefully reworked or perfected or made smooth by polishing)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Showing a high degree of refinement and the assurance that comes from wide social experience

Synonyms:

polished; refined; urbane

Context example:

maintained an urbane tone in his letters

Similar:

sophisticated (having or appealing to those having worldly knowledge and refinement and savoir-faire)

Sense 3

Meaning:

(of grains especially rice) having the husk or outer layers removed

Synonyms:

milled; polished

Context example:

polished rice

Similar:

processed (prepared or converted from a natural state by subjecting to a special process)

Sense 4

Meaning:

(of lumber or stone) to trim and smooth

Synonyms:

dressed; polished

Similar:

finished ((of materials or goods) brought to the desired final state)

 Context examples 

Plan to hand in the most polished performance you can muster.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished society.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Here was my own pet lunatic—the most pronounced of his type that I had ever met with—talking elemental philosophy, and with the manner of a polished gentleman.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

He contemplated the bones, clean-picked and polished, pink with the cell-life in them which had not yet died.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

The men were dressed in blue, of the same shade as their hats, and wore well-polished boots with a deep roll of blue at the tops.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

There is no man who can be impolite in so polished a fashion.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A device consisting of a polished surface designed to reflect light.

(Mirror Device Component, NCI Thesaurus)

Several characteristics of each tombstone were recorded, including rock type, length of tombstone exposure (based on date of death), direction of the sampled face (cardinal direction) and surface texture (polished or unpolished).

(Tales from the crypt: Life after death in a graveyard, National Science Foundation)

Was set a maximum limit of 0.2 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of polished rice.

(Parboiling husked rice reduces arsenic content, SciDev.Net)

It was a stiff leather purse, with a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which Peggotty had evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater delight.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)