TRANSCENDENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does transcendent mean? 

• TRANSCENDENT (adjective)
  The adjective TRANSCENDENT has 2 senses:

1. exceeding or surpassing usual limits especially in excellence

2. beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience or understanding

  Familiarity information: TRANSCENDENT used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TRANSCENDENT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Exceeding or surpassing usual limits especially in excellence

Synonyms:

surpassing; transcendent

Similar:

superior (of high or superior quality or performance)

Derivation:

transcend (be superior or better than some standard)

transcend (be greater in scope or size than some standard)

transcendence; transcendency (the state of excelling or surpassing or going beyond usual limits)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience or understanding

Context example:

the notion of any transcendent reality beyond thought

Similar:

unknowable (not knowable)

Derivation:

transcend (be superior or better than some standard)

transcend (be greater in scope or size than some standard)

transcendence; transcendency (a state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience)

 Context examples 

He was an universal favourite, and his ingenuity in little things was transcendent.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I—a—I'll know nobody—and—a—say nothing—and—a—live nowhere—until I have crushed—to—a—undiscoverable atoms—the—transcendent and immortal hypocrite and perjurer—HEEP!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)