sublimate
Americanverb (used with object)
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Psychology. to divert the energy of (a sexual or other biological impulse) from its immediate goal to one of a more acceptable social, moral, or aesthetic nature or use.
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Chemistry.
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to sublime (a solid substance); extract by this process.
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to refine or purify (a substance).
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to make nobler or purer.
To read about great men sublimates ambition.
verb (used without object)
noun
adjective
verb
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psychol to direct the energy of (a primitive impulse, esp a sexual one) into activities that are considered to be socially more acceptable
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(tr) to make purer; refine
noun
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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sublimablenessnoun
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sublimationnoun
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desublimateverb (used with object)
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resublimateverb (used with object)
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sublimableadjective
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supersublimatedadjective
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unsublimatedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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sublimatesimple
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sublimatessimple
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have sublimatedperfect
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has sublimatedperfect
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am sublimatingprogressive
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are sublimatingprogressive
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is sublimatingprogressive
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have been sublimatingperfect progressive
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has been sublimatingperfect progressive
Past
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sublimatedsimple
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had sublimatedperfect
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was sublimatingprogressive
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were sublimatingprogressive
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had been sublimatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of sublimate
1425–75; late Middle English: exalted, sublimated < Latin sublīmātus (past participle of sublīmāre to elevate), equivalent to sublīm ( is ) sublime + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
When you're at a lecture and you feel restless, you've got to sublimate the desire to move around. That means you force the desire to be more subtle so you can continue listening — even if you don't want to. Psychologists use the verb sublimate to describe the process of channeling intense energy into something useful or appropriate. Freud sublimated his desire to live at home with his mother, and he moved into his own apartment. Sublimate is related to the word sublime — both words come from the Latin word sublimare, which means "to raise up" or "to exalt." So Freud's finally getting his own place is, arguably, a superior — a more exalted — living situation.
Vocabulary lists containing sublimate
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It almost feels like some kind of test, where you are forced to sublimate your wishes and, perhaps, your self respect.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 5, 2026
We have to sublimate a lot of emotions into our sports teams because we’re repressed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2024
Halloween may be over, but if you ask me carving a gourd still seems like a good way to sublimate creeping dread.
From Slate ● Nov. 4, 2022
So they decided to sublimate the chaos of the invasion, inscribing their new fears and hopes on pre-existing works by 17 artists.
From New York Times ● Aug. 10, 2022
In external, inoculated cases the wounded tissues should be early destroyed by potent caustics—fuming nitric acid, corrosive sublimate, iodized phenol, chlorine, sulphate of copper, carbolic acid, or the hot iron.
From A System of Practical Medicine by American Authors, Vol. I Volume 1: Pathology and General Diseases by Various
He sublimates by focusing on new fabrication methods and by researching casting and molding techniques.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 27, 2026
With that said, I do think some surprising sensitivities within the conservative doctrine have come into view, as the movement sublimates into the uncomfortable posture of the establishment.
From Slate ● Feb. 12, 2026
"Because Martian air is so thin and the temperatures so cold, water-ice snow sublimates, or becomes a gas, before it even touches the ground. Dry-ice snow actually does reach the ground," NASA's website states.
From Salon ● May 16, 2025
Hoss, whose quiet, sympathetic gaze can register even the subtlest shifts in emotional temperature, here sublimates her star persona in much the same way that Sharon represses her own needs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2022
That which sublimates from the dynamic consciousness into the mental consciousness has alone any value.
From Fantasia of the Unconscious by Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
The ecstasies of attraction are sublimated into their long conversations about Boethius and Hildegard von Bingen, or about the suddenly debatable issues of contraception and clerical celibacy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 8, 2026
It’s a good-looking movie about sublimated lives and the need to break free, one that feels torn between presenting the surface allure of those desires in a repressive time and exploring anything deeper.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2025
The 12-foot-long cabinetlike work is the latest in the series that Peters calls “impossible monuments”: installations made out of disparate, significant materials that explore overlooked or sublimated matters of import.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 20, 2024
Materials are sublimated in a vacuum under heat supply, i.e. they are converted from a solid to a gaseous state and condense on the substrate surface.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 14, 2024
Both my father and my grandmother believed that Jagu’s and Rajesh’s mental illnesses had been precipitated—even caused, perhaps—by the apocalypse of Partition, its political trauma sublimated into their psychic trauma.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
In earlier work, she showed that sublimating CO2 ice can trigger debris flows that cut deep channels along crater walls.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2025
Gas from the sunbathed, sublimating ice also puffs intermingled dust away from the surface to form a distinctive, comet-trailing tail.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 26, 2023
Yet they have enough in common that one might think they could be friends: Each is frustrated with life, work, their domestic arrangements, their parents; depressed; and sublimating their anger except as regards the other.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 10, 2023
Having seen how images could be used for mass manipulation, Bernays proposed to maintain social order by sublimating individuals’ irrational impulses into capitalist consumption.
From New York Times ● Jan. 9, 2018
Suddenly he found himself sublimating his fear, rising to a place where he could look the scythe in his dark eyes, the same deep shade of blue as his robe.
From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
