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Definitions

sublimate

[suhb-luh-mayt, suhb-luh-mit, -mayt] / ˈsʌb ləˌmeɪt, ˈsʌb lə mɪt, -ˌmeɪt /
VERB
purify
Synonyms
Antonyms


VERB
divert
Synonyms


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

“You’ve got to sublimate yourself, your ego, and yes, your identity. You must stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.”

From Salon ● Mar. 12, 2025

This refusenik sensibility is threaded through the entire series, and any attempt by the characters to sublimate themselves to social norms fizzled quickly and often in grand fashion.

From New York Times ● May 12, 2023

“You have to sublimate your own ego to some extent.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 22, 2023

Of the various modern artificial means of preserving bodies, impregnation with corrosive sublimate appears to be one of the most effective, next to immersion in spirits.

From The New Gresham Encyclopedia Volume 4, Part 2: Ebert to Estremadura 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

"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

There are few, few people in whom the living impulse and reaction develops and sublimates into mental consciousness.

From Fantasia of the Unconscious by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

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

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

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

“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

“You’re just sublimating your own frustration with my income.”

From "Paper Towns" by John Green




Vocabulary lists containing sublimate


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