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transcendental

[tran-sen-den-tl, -suh n-]
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adjective
  1. transcendent, surpassing, or superior.
  2. being beyond ordinary or common experience, thought, or belief; supernatural.
  3. abstract or metaphysical.
  4. idealistic, lofty, or extravagant.
  5. Philosophy.
    1. beyond the contingent and accidental in human experience, but not beyond all human knowledge.Compare transcendent(def 4b).
    2. pertaining to certain theories, etc., explaining what is objective as the contribution of the mind.
    3. Kantianism.of, pertaining to, based upon, or concerned with a priori elements in experience, which condition human knowledge.Compare transcendent(def 4b).
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noun
  1. Mathematics. transcendental number.
  2. transcendentals, Scholasticism. categories that have universal application, as being, one, true, good.
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Origin of transcendental

From the Medieval Latin word trānscendentālis, dating back to 1615–25. See transcendent, -al1
Related formstran·scen·den·tal·i·ty, nountran·scen·den·tal·ly, adverbun·tran·scen·den·tal, adjectiveun·tran·scen·den·tal·ly, adverb
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for transcendentally

Historical Examples

  • Life is too transcendentally humorous for a man not to take it seriously.

    Simon the Jester

    William J. Locke

  • Man learnt to conceive Nature's rule, not transcendentally, but intrinsically.

  • They also talked on serious subjects; subjects so transcendentally serious as to be of interest only by night.

    The Pines of Lory

    John Ames Mitchell

  • In the end, Death had grown to be something more than Death to him—it was, mysteriously and transcendentally, Love as well.

    Books and Characters

    Lytton Strachey

  • I might have been keener, I dare say; but one of the transcendentally lovely things of youth is its perfect faith.

    Hope Mills

    Amanda M. Douglas

British Dictionary definitions for transcendentally

transcendental

adjective
  1. transcendent, superior, or surpassing
  2. (in the philosophy of Kant)
    1. (of a judgment or logical deduction) being both synthetic and a priori
    2. of or relating to knowledge of the presuppositions of thought
  3. philosophy beyond our experience of phenomena, although not beyond potential knowledge
  4. theol surpassing the natural plane of reality or knowledge; supernatural or mystical
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Derived Formstranscendentality, nountranscendentally, adverb
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for transcendentally

transcendental

adj.

1660s, from Medieval Latin transcendentalis, from Latin transcendentem (see transcendent). Transcendental meditation attested by 1966.

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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper