Verb

(compos)

To make something by merging parts.

The editor composed a historical journal from many individual letters.

Try to compose your thoughts.

* Bishop Sprat

Zeal ought to be composed of the highest degrees of all pious affection.

To make up the whole; to constitute.

A church is composed of its members.

* I. Watts

A few useful things compose their intellectual possessions.

(nonstandard) To comprise.

(transitive, or, intransitive) To construct by mental labor; to think up; particularly, to produce or create a literary or musical work.

The orator composed his speech over the week prior.

Nine numbered symphonies, including the Fifth, were composed by Beethoven.

It's difficult to compose without absolute silence.

* Alexander Pope

Let me compose / Something in verse as well as prose.

* B. R. Haydon

the genius that composed such works as the "Standard" and "Last Supper"

(sometimes, reflexive) To calm; to free from agitation.

The defendant couldn't compose herself and was found in contempt.

* Dryden

Compose thy mind; / Nor frauds are here contrived, nor force designed.

To arrange the elements of a photograph or other picture.

To settle (an argument, dispute etc.); to come to a settlement.

* 2010 , (Christopher Hitchens), Hitch-22 , Atlantic 2011, p. 280:

By trying his best to compose matters with the mullahs, he had sincerely shown that he did not seek a violent collision

To arrange in proper form; to reduce to order; to put in proper state or condition.

* Dryden

In a peaceful grave my corpse compose .

* Milton

How in safety best we may / Compose our present evils.

(printing, dated) To arrange (types) in a composing stick for printing; to typeset.

Verb

(refin)

To reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities; to free from dross or alloy; to separate from extraneous matter; to purify

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Yesterday’s fuel , passage=The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania.

To purify from what is gross, coarse, vulgar, inelegant, low, and the like; to make elegant or excellent; to polish.

To become pure; to be cleared of feculent matter.

To improve in accuracy, delicacy, or excellence.

To affect nicety or subtlety in thought or language.