SUPERNATURAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does supernatural mean? 

• SUPERNATURAL (noun)
  The noun SUPERNATURAL has 1 sense:

1. supernatural forces and events and beings collectively

  Familiarity information: SUPERNATURAL used as a noun is very rare.

• SUPERNATURAL (adjective)
  The adjective SUPERNATURAL has 1 sense:

1. not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material

  Familiarity information: SUPERNATURAL used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SUPERNATURAL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Supernatural forces and events and beings collectively

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

occult; supernatural

Context example:

She doesn't believe in the supernatural

Hypernyms ("supernatural" is a kind of...):

causal agency; causal agent; cause (any entity that produces an effect or is responsible for events or results)

Meronyms (parts of "supernatural"):

theurgy (the effect of supernatural or divine intervention in human affairs)

destiny; fate (the ultimate agency regarded as predetermining the course of events (often personified as a woman))

Meronyms (members of "supernatural"):

spiritual being; supernatural being (an incorporeal being believed to have powers to affect the course of human events)

Derivation:

supernatural (not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material)

• SUPERNATURAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material

Context example:

supernatural forces and occurrences and beings

Similar:

charming; magic; magical; sorcerous; witching; wizard; wizardly (possessing or using or characteristic of or appropriate to supernatural powers)

witchlike (being or having the character of witchcraft)

transmundane (existing or extending beyond the physical world)

talismanic (possessing or believed to possess magic power especially protective power)

nonnatural; otherworldly; preternatural; transcendental (existing outside of or not in accordance with nature)

necromantic (given to or produced by or used in the art of conjuring up the dead)

metaphysical (transcending physical matter or the laws of nature)

marvellous; marvelous; miraculous (being or having the character of a miracle)

elfin; fey (suggestive of an elf in strangeness and otherworldliness)

eldritch; uncanny; unearthly; weird (suggesting the operation of supernatural influences)

eerie (suggestive of the supernatural; mysterious)

apparitional; ghostlike; ghostly; phantasmal; spectral; spiritual (resembling or characteristic of a phantom)

Also:

unreal (lacking in reality or substance or genuineness; not corresponding to acknowledged facts or criteria)

Antonym:

natural (existing in or in conformity with nature or the observable world; neither supernatural nor magical)

Derivation:

supernatural (supernatural forces and events and beings collectively)

supernaturalness (the quality of being attributed to power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces)

 Context examples 

One moment surely might be spared; and, so desperate should be the exertion of her strength, that, unless secured by supernatural means, the lid in one moment should be thrown back.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“That's tellings, my blessed infant,” she retorted, tapping her nose again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an imp of supernatural intelligence.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

These studies allow us to affirm that the construction of megalithic landscapes is probably one of the most long‑lasting and powerful legacies of past societies and that, for millennia, these monuments were the scene for social interaction and the encounter with supernatural powers.

(The necropolis of El Barranquete in Níjar (Almería), proven to have been used for funerary rituals throughout the Bronze Age, University of Granada)

Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome and almost intolerable.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She vanished like a discontented fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He had heard my story with that half kind of belief that is given to a tale of spirits and supernatural events; but when he was called upon to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his incredulity returned.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung, in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)