TRANSCENDENTAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does transcendental mean? 

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

1. existing outside of or not in accordance with nature

2. of or characteristic of a system of philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical and material

  Familiarity information: TRANSCENDENTAL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TRANSCENDENTAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Existing outside of or not in accordance with nature

Synonyms:

nonnatural; otherworldly; preternatural; transcendental

Context example:

find transcendental motives for sublunary action

Similar:

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

Sense 2

Meaning:

Of or characteristic of a system of philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical and material

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Pertainym:

transcendentalism (any system of philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical and material)

Derivation:

transcendentalism (any system of philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical and material)

 Context examples 

And now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors—behold!

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

His thin lips, like the dies of a machine, stamped out phrases that cut and stung; or again, pursing caressingly about the inchoate sound they articulated, the thin lips shaped soft and velvety things, mellow phrases of glow and glory, of haunting beauty, reverberant of the mystery and inscrutableness of life; and yet again the thin lips were like a bugle, from which rang the crash and tumult of cosmic strife, phrases that sounded clear as silver, that were luminous as starry spaces, that epitomized the final word of science and yet said something more—the poet's word, the transcendental truth, elusive and without words which could express, and which none the less found expression in the subtle and all but ungraspable connotations of common words.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)