sublimado

Forms

sublimado m (plural sublimados)^[1]

Etymology

It is the past participle of the verb, used as a noun: from Spanish sublimar.^[1][2] Corominas dates the chemical sense to the 16th century and calls it an innovation of Medieval Latin, where sublimatum named the product of sublimation.^[3][4][5] The Academy's 1899 dictionary derives the noun from the second sense of the verb, “to sublimate”.^[6]

The verb is from Latin sublīmō (“to raise, lift up”),^[3][7] itself formed on the adjective sublīmis (“lofty”).^[8][9] Corominas records the verb in the sense “to raise on high” from 1438.^[3]

The same Medieval Latin word survives in an older, popular shape: solimán, recorded in 1495, is an altered form of Old Spanish solimad (1438), which Corominas thinks is probably a variant of Mozarabic origin.^[3] The DLE explains its form by the influence of the personal name Arabic سليمان (sulaymān).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Alfonso X's Lapidario (c. 1250) already uses the participle of sublimar for a mineral treated by sublimation: Et quando es sublimado qualquier manera dellos “and when any kind of them is sublimated”.^[10][11] As a noun for the substance itself, the Diccionario de Autoridades (1739) defines it as what chemists call the fine matter that the fire raises to the top of the subliming vessel, heavier and more solid than the so-called flor (“flowers”).^[5]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th century the participle sublimado was mostly used in the sense “exalted, raised to high rank”, in Villena, Alfonso de la Torre and the cancioneros.^[12] The same sense appears in the Americas, where in 1568 a Guatemalan writer called the name of a town aquel sublimado nombre “that exalted name”.^[13]

The chemical noun narrowed to one compound: the Academy's 1817 dictionary defines sublimado or sublimado corrosivo as mercury combined with muriatic acid and sublimated by fire.^[14] Domínguez added a sublimado dulce “sweet sublimate”, the mild mercury chloride of the pharmacists.^[15] From 1899 the Academy gives the general sense “substance obtained by sublimation” and treats sublimado corrosivo as a separate phrase, a white, poisonous mercury compound used as a disinfectant.^[6][16] Moliner lists solimán and argento vivo as synonyms of this phrase.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X uses sublimado as a participle of a substance that has been sublimated.^[10]
• 1342–1350 – DEMel lists the form solimado under this word, in Alfonso XI's Libro de la montería.^[17]
• 1422–1425 – the participle in the sense “exalted”, in Enrique de Villena's Tratado de fascinación.^[12]
• 16th century – the chemical sense of the noun, according to Corominas.^[3]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines the noun as a chemists' term, with a quotation from Palacios's Palestra pharmaceutica.^[5]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary defines sublimado corrosivo as a mercury compound.^[14]
• 1899 – the Academy separates the general sense “substance obtained by sublimation” from sublimado corrosivo.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (chemistry) A substance obtained by sublimation (sublimación), the passage of a solid directly into vapour.^[1][18][19]
2. (chemistry) Short for sublimado corrosivo: mercuric chloride, a very poisonous compound used in medicine as a disinfectant: El farmacéutico guardaba el sublimado en un frasco aparte.^[1][2]

Related words

• sublimar
• sublimación
• sublime
• solimán
• Latin sublīmō

Usage notes

Sublimado is also the past participle of sublimar, and as an adjective it means “exalted, raised to a higher degree”.^[15][2] Cervantes uses it in this sense in the Quijote: te verás tan alto, y tan sublimado.^[20]

References

1. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. sublimado
2. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sublimado
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sublime
4. ^ a b Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. solimán
5. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 169
6. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 930
7. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. sublimar
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. sublimar
11. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. sublimado
13. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. sublimado
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 817
15. ^ a b Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1590
16. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1538
17. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. sublimado
18. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. sublimado
19. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. sublimado
20. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 1051