To chemists, sublimation names "the process of an entity passing directly from the solid state to the vapor state." When our correspondent reflected on the vaporizing snow, he did more than recall high school science; he also wondered if this subliming or sublimating was associated—at one level or another—with the adjective subliminal. Psychologists know subliminal as a descriptive term for "something that exists or functions outside the area of conscious awareness; or that is designed to influence the mind on levels other than that of conscious awareness and especially by presentation too brief to be consciously perceived."

It turns out the association between sublime and subliminal is no more than skin deep. The verbs sublime and sublimate and the adjective sublime all originate in the Latin sublimis—literally, "high or elevated." In contrast, subliminal entered English from the Latin sub (meaning "beneath") plus limen (meaning "threshold") and has linguistic kin in such terms as eliminate and preliminary.