Sublimate

Quick meaning: Sublimate is a verb meaning To heat (a substance) in a container so as to convert it into a gas which then condenses in solid form on cooler parts of the container.

Meaning

To heat (a substance) in a container so as to convert it into a gas which then condenses in solid form on cooler parts of the container.

More Meanings

1. To refine (something) until it disappears or loses all meaning.
2. To obtain (something) through, or as if through, sublimation.
3. To purify or refine (a substance).
4. Synonym of sublime.
5. Of a substance: to change from a solid into a gas without passing through the liquid state, with or without being heated.
6. Of a substance: to change from a gas into a solid without passing through the liquid state.
7. 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.

Example Sentences

The precepts of Christianity are […] so apt […] to cleanse and sublimate the more gross and corrupt.

Foreigners extol the American "energy" […] 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.

When he got home from the parade, however, Professor Solanka was seized by melancholy, his usual secret sadness, which he sublimated into the public sphere. Something was amiss with the world. The optimistic peace-and-love philosophy of his youth having given him up, he no longer knew how to reconcile himself to an increasingly phoney […] reality.

Word Forms

• sublimates
• sublimating
• sublimated

Synonyms for sublimate

Depending on context, synonyms include sublime, refined, pure, purify, distill, rarefy.

Antonyms for sublimate

Common opposites include deposit, desublimate.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include purify, sublime, purified, distill, rarefy, subtilize.

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