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Showing results for sublimate. Search instead for subprimate.
Definitions

sublimate

[suhb-luh-meyt, suhb-luh-mit, -meyt] / 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

She pulled him up, brushed him off and transitioned him into a life where he would sublimate his addictive impulses into steady work.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2024

Rama says in a class she is teaching that the power of narrative is to sublimate reality.

From Salon ● Jan. 9, 2023

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

Bichloride of mercury, mercuric chloride; Ð sometimes called corrosive sublimate.

From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Noah Webster

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

Neither bismuth nor antimony sublimates when heated in a glass tube closed at one end.

From A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe Being A Graduated Course Of Analysis For The Use Of Students And All Those Engaged In The Examination Of Metallic Combinations by Anonymous

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

In another scene, it fosters a shared revolt with the older women, who briefly allow their own sublimated pain to emerge.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 7, 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

Our next workshop, no one understood what my sublimated love sonnet was all about, but Rudy's brought down the house.

From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez

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

Pfeiffer's Betty holds a softness in her strength while also sublimating a rage that magnificently roars to the surface the more Gerald's colleagues try to silence her.

From Salon ● Apr. 17, 2022

I suggested that perhaps in an age of digital streaming, streetwear had replaced record collecting, sublimating whatever obsessive, completist, seemingly male-specific tendencies that were once reserved for rare Nirvana EPs and Kanye’s earliest mixtapes.

From New York Times ● Sep. 3, 2018

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

From "Paper Towns" by John Green




Vocabulary lists containing sublimate


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