SUBLIMATE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Sublimate

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

verb

Sublimate v. t. (past & past part. sublimated; pres. part. sublimating)

To bring by heat into the state of vapor, which, on cooling, returns again to the solid state; as, to sublimate sulphur or camphor.

To refine and exalt; to heighten; to elevate. "The precepts of Christianity are... so apt to cleanse and sublimate the more gross and corrupt."

(Psychology) To redirect the energy (of sexual or other biological drives) into a more socially acceptable or constructive form.

noun

Sublimate n. (Chem.) A product obtained by sublimation; hence, also, a purified product so obtained.

Corrosive sublimate. (Chem.) mercuric chloride. See Corrosive sublimate under Corrosive.

adjective

Sublimate adj. Brought into a state of vapor by heat, and again condensed as a solid.

See images of 'Sublimate'

Etymology of 'Sublimate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Sublimate" Quotes from Famous Books

... can conceive no mood of mind more in keeping with what is to follow upon the grave, than those fancies which warp our frail hulks toward the ocean of the Infinite, and that so sublimate the realities of this being, that they seem to belong to that shadowy realm whither ...

— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... and placed in the left wing of the chateau, far from the inhabited rooms. In a few hours putrefaction became complete, and they were obliged to plunge the mutilated body into a bath filled with corrosive sublimate. This extremely dangerous operation was long and painful; and M. Cadet de Gassicourt deserves much commendation for the courage he displayed under these circumstances; for notwithstanding every precaution, ...

— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... kinds of bacteria, although on occasion these harmless or useful bacteria may develop into most obnoxious germs, producing unpleasant fermentation. It might be easy enough for a doctor to make a patient swallow some antiseptic solution, like carbolic acid or corrosive sublimate or nitrate of silver, for the purpose of getting rid of certain undesirable bacteria in the intestines, but it does not need a doctor to know that for a patient to swallow such active poisons as these would not merely ...

— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... whether the tragic or the comic predominated in the strange scene which was then acting. In the midst of all the great King's calamities, his passion for writing indifferent poetry grew stronger and stronger. Enemies all round him, despair in his heart, pills of corrosive sublimate hidden in his clothes, he poured forth hundreds upon hundreds of lines, hateful to gods and men, the insipid dregs of Voltaire's Hippocrene, the faint echo of the lyre of Chaulieu. It is amusing to compare what he did during the ...

— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... imitator of sense, has not a pure enough soul to soar very high away from it. But our writers have been able partially to vindicate poets by pointing out that Dante was able to travel the whole way toward absolute beauty, and to sublimate his perceptions to supersensual fineness without losing their poetic tone. Nineteenth and twentieth century writers may modestly assert that it is the fault of their inadequacy to represent poetry, and not a fault in the poetic character as such, that accounts for the tameness ...

— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

More quotes...