sublimate
Americanverb (used with object)
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sublimates,
present (3rd person singular)
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sublimated,
past participle, past
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sublimating
present participle
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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)
-
sublimates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
sublimated,
past participle, past
-
sublimating
present participle
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.
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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
The other anagram of “Tár” is, of course, “ART,” and as real-life art monsters disappear from view, “Tár” offers up a work into which we can sublimate our own Schadenfreude and sympathy for abusers.
From New York Times ● Dec. 31, 2022
Gerwig is no less movingly misguided as Babette, who — like her husband, but through more extreme measures — tries to sublimate fears, both rational and irrational, of impending doom.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 28, 2022
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
Some women understand how to sublimate the transference, how to modify it until it attains a kind of fitness for existence; others manifest it in its original, crude and generally impossible form.
From A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
He sublimates by focusing on new fabrication methods and by researching casting and molding techniques.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 27, 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
The tiny blood siphons are attracted by the carbon dioxide that sublimates off the dry ice, like breath exhaled from a potential host.
From Slate ● Jun. 27, 2017
The afflatus of rhythm, even if it be the pomp of the Alexandrine, sublimates the passion, and clarifies its mutterings into poetry.
From The Sense of Beauty Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory by George Santayana
But the sibling competition, however sublimated, was real.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025
Britpop conveyed Britishness through wryness; grunge articulated Americana through sublimated passion.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 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
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
“The show is about the costs of sublimating parts of ourselves to fit in,” Edelman said in an interview.
From New York Times ● Apr. 5, 2023
But previous work has shown that sublimating water ice alone couldn’t provide enough push to explain ’Oumuamua’s anomalous acceleration, so the authors of the new paper add an additional step.
From Scientific American ● Mar. 22, 2023
Actually, by now it's full of slowly sublimating ice.
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
