sublimate
English
WOTD – 3 September 2006
Etymology
From Latin sublīmātus, past participle of sublīmāre (“to raise, elevate”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈsʌblɪmeɪt/
Audio (US) (file) Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
sublimate (third-person singular simple present sublimates, present participle sublimating, simple past and past participle sublimated)
- (transitive, intransitive, physics) To change state from a solid to a gas without passing through the liquid state. [from 16th c.]
- Synonym: sublime
- (transitive, archaic) To purify or refine a substance through such a change of state.
- (transitive, psychoanalysis) To modify the natural expression of a sexual or primitive instinct in a socially acceptable manner; to divert the energy of such an instinct into some acceptable activity.
- 1969, Susan Sontag, “What’s Happening in America”, in Styles of Radical Will, Kindle edition, Penguin Modern Classics, published 2009, →ISBN, page 194:
- Foreigners extol the American “energy,” attributing to it both our unparalleled economic prosperity and the splendid vivacity of our arts and entertainments. […] Basically it is the energy of violence, of free-floating resentment and anxiety unleashed by chronic cultural dislocations which must be, for the most part, ferociously sublimated. This energy has mainly been sublimated into crude materialism and acquisitiveness.
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- (archaic) To raise to a place of honor; to refine and exalt.
- Dr. H. More
- The precepts of Christianity are […] so apt to cleanse and sublimate the more gross and corrupt.
- Dr. H. More
Related terms
Translations
to change from solid to gas
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to purify or refine by sublimation
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psychoanalysis
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to raise to a place of honor
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked
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See also
Italian
Latin
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