sublime

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adjective

Large and impressive in size, scope, or extent: august, baronial, grand, grandiose, imposing, lordly, magnific, magnificent, majestic, noble, princely, regal, royal, splendid, stately, superb. See big/small/amount, good/bad.

adj

Definition: great, magnificent
Antonyms: lowly, poor, second-rate, secondary

sublime, the, a quality of awesome grandeur in art or nature, which some 18th‐century writers distinguished from the merely beautiful. An anonymous Greek critical treatise of the 1st century CE, Peri hypsous (‘On the Sublime’, mistakenly attributed to the 3rd‐century rhetorician Longinus), provided the basis for the 18th‐century interest in sublimity, after Boileau's French translation in 1672. ‘Longinus’ refers to the sublime as a loftiness of thought and feeling in literature, and associates it with terrifyingly impressive natural phenomena such as mountains, volcanoes, storms, and the sea. These associations were revived in Edmund Burke's influential Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), which argues that the sublime is characterized by obscurity, vastness, and power, while the beautiful is light, smooth, and delicate. The 18th‐century enthusiasm for the sublime in landscape and the visual arts was one of the developments that undermined the restraints of neoclassicism and thus prepared the way for Romanticism.

C18 aesthetic category associated with ideas of awe, intensity ruggedness, terror, and vastness emphasizing Man's relative insignificance in the face of Nature, arousing emotions, and stimulating the imagination. It was therefore distinct from the Beautiful and the Picturesque, and was of profound importance in relation to an appreciation of the grandeur and violence of natural phenomena. Its chief apologists were Edmund Burke (1729–97), with his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), with his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). In architecture the Sublime was associated with great size, overwhelming scale, the primitive (especially the unadorned Doric Order), and stereometrical purity (as in much Neo-Classicism, e.g. Boul-lée's work, and the visions of gaols by Piranesi).

Bibliography

• Burke (1757)
• Chilvers, Osborne, & Farr (eds.) (1988)
• Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

A concept deeply embedded in 18th-century aesthetics, but deriving from the 1st century rhetorical treatise On the Sublime by Longinus. The sublime is great, fearful, noble, calculated to arouse sentiments of pride and majesty, as well as awe and sometimes terror. According to Alexander Gerard, writing in 1759, ‘When a large object is presented, the mind expands itself to the extent of that object, and is filled with one grand sensation, which totally possessing it, composes it into a solemn sedateness and strikes it with deep silent wonder and admiration: it finds such a difficulty in spreading itself to the dimensions of its object, as enlivens and invigorates its frame: and having overcome the opposition which this occasions, it sometimes imagines itself present in every part of the scene which it contemplates; and from the sense of this immensity, feels a noble pride, and entertains a lofty conception of its own capacity.’ In Kant's aesthetic theory the sublime ‘raises the soul above the height of vulgar commonplace’. We experience the vast spectacles of nature as ‘absolutely great’ and of irresistible might and power. This perception is fearful, but by conquering this fear, and by regarding as small ‘those things of which we are wont to be solicitous’ we quicken our sense of moral freedom. So we turn the experience of frailty and impotence into one of our true, inward moral freedom as the mind triumphs over nature, and it is this triumph of reason that is truly sublime. Kant thus paradoxically places our sense of the sublime in an awareness of ourselves as transcending nature, rather than in an awareness of ourselves as a frail and insignificant part of it. Most mountaineers and sailors disagree. See also environmental ethics.

to vaporize from the solid without passing through a liquid phase.
—sublimation n.

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For a list of words related to sublime, see:

• Beautiful, attractive, or well-formed
• Special, Bright, Skillful, or Unusual
• Wise, Mature, or Experienced
• Good, Sincere, Honest, or Just
• Mystical States and Experiences - sublime: (adj) spiritually exalted and noble

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See words rhyming with "sublime."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Sublime.

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Dansk (Danish)
adj. - sublim, ophøjet, ædel, mageløs
v. tr. - ophøje, blive ophøjet, forædle, blive forædlet
v. intr. - blive ophøjet, blive forædlet
n. - ophøjethed

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    fra det sublime til det tåbelige

Nederlands (Dutch)
subliem, sublimeren

Français (French)
adj. - sublime, fantastique, suprême
v. tr. - (Chim) sublimer
v. intr. - (Chim) sublimer
n. - le sublime

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    du sublime au grotesque

Deutsch (German)
adj. - erhaben
n. - Erhabenes
v. - sublimieren, veredeln

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    ein Abfall ins Profane

Ελληνική (Greek)
adj. - ανυπέρβλητος, αξεπέραστος, υπέροχος, θεσπέσιος, ύψος, μεγαλείο
n. - ύψος, μεγαλείο
v. - εξευγενίζω, εξυψώνω, (χημ.) εξαχνώ/-ούμαι

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    από το υψηλόν στο γελοίο

Italiano (Italian)
sublime

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    dal sublime alla farsa

Português (Portuguese)
adj. - sublime
n. - sublime (m)
v. - sublimar

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    do ridículo ao sublime

Русский (Russian)
возвышенное, возвышенный, очищенный, возвышать

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    от великого до смешного

Español (Spanish)
adj. - sublime, supremo, majestuoso
v. tr. - sublimar, refinar, purificar
v. intr. - sublimarse
n. - lo sublime

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    de lo sublime a lo ridículo

Svenska (Swedish)
adj. - storslagen, sublim, häpnadsväckande, makalös
n. - storslagenhet, storhet
v. - sublimera, förädla, lyfta, sublimeras

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
庄严的, 壮观的, 崇高的, 使变高尚, 使升华, 使纯化, 变高尚, 升华, 纯化, 庄严, 顶点, 崇高

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    从高超到荒谬, 从一个极端到另一个极端

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
adj. - 莊嚴的, 壯觀的, 崇高的
v. tr. - 使變高尚, 使昇華, 使純化
v. intr. - 變高尚, 昇華, 純化
n. - 莊嚴, 頂點, 崇高

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    從高超到荒謬, 從一個極端到另一個極端

한국어 (Korean)
adj. - 장엄한, 최고의, 고상한
v. tr. - 승화시키다, 고상하게 하다, 정화하다
v. intr. - 승화하다, 고상하게 되다
n. - 장엄 , 숭고, 지고

日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - 荘厳な, 壮大な, ひどい
n. - 崇高なもの
v. - 高尚にする, 高尚になる, 昇華させる, 昇華する

idioms:

• from the sublime to the ridiculous    ピンからキリまで

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(صفه) مهيب, فائق, رائع, نبيل (الاسم) عالم الروعه و الخيال (فعل) حول الى ما هو أسمى, شرف, حول من صلب الى غاز‏

עברית (Hebrew)
adj. - ‮נעלה, נשגב, שמיימי, אצילי, מדהים, נורא, גמור‬
v. tr. - ‮זיכך, עשה לנשגב‬
v. intr. - ‮היטהר, הזדכך‬
n. - ‮שגב, אצילות‬

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