Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant

The sublime: a word which has been used as both noun and adjective; a term that has been employed to describe a form of rhetoric, a category of aesthetics, a quality of greatness, a sphere of elevated thought; a state of overwhelming emotion; an awe-inspiring quality in art or nature; a characteristic of spiritual or moral excellence─and many other things besides. It is, in short, a word which has been adopted and adapted in a multitude of different ways over two millennia.