Refactoring defined: (apply to wikipages with caution =)#

Refactoring is term used to describe techniques that reduce the short-term pain of redesigning. When you are refactoring you are not changing the functionality of your program, you are changing its internal structure in order to make it easier to understand and work with. Refactoring changes are usually small steps, renaming a method, moving a field from one class to another, or consolidating two similar methods in a superclass. Each step is tiny, yet in a couple of hours of these small steps you can do a power of good to a program.
see:
http://www.refactoring.com/
http://www.industriallogic.com/xp/refactoring/
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=refactoring