Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person having authority over others, especially an overseer or a shift supervisor.
  • transitive verb To provide with more personnel than necessary.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In general, an overseer, or foreman.
  • noun An arbitrator, or umpire.
  • noun In the writings of F. W. Nietzsche, a type with more or less superhuman qualities toward which he supposed mankind to be developing.
  • noun In coal-mining, the person having charge of the work below ground.
  • To employ too many men on or in, as on a ship.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One in authority over others; a chief; usually, an overseer or boss.
  • noun An arbiter.
  • noun In the philosophy of Nietzsche, a man of superior physique and powers capable of dominating others; one fitted to survive in an egoistic struggle for the mastery.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A person who supervises others; a supervisor
  • noun A person with great powers; a superman
  • verb to provide with too many personnel

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[N., sense 2, translation of German Übermensch : über, over, higher + Mensch, man.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

A calque of German Übermensch. Compare superman.

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Examples

  • The father was faithful and grateful: the son knows no law but his own humor; detests the ugly dwarf who has nursed him; chafes furiously under his claims for some return for his tender care; and is, in short, a totally unmoral person, a born anarchist, the ideal of Bakoonin, an anticipation of the "overman" of

    The Perfect Wagnerite, Commentary on the Ring George Bernard Shaw 1903

  • He created the concept of "overman," the man stronger than others with the right to step over the weak, which attracted Hitler.

    Latest Articles 2008

  • He often summons the image of a bridge, as he does here in his perhaps most definitive passage about the Overman: There it was too that I picked up the word "overman" by the way, and that man is something that must be overcome-that man is a bridge and no end: proclaiming himself blessed in view of his noon and evening, as the way to new dawns-Zarathustra's word of the great noon, and whatever else I hung up over man like the last crimson light of evening.

    Archive 2005-10-01 Tusar N Mohapatra 2005

  • He often summons the image of a bridge, as he does here in his perhaps most definitive passage about the Overman: There it was too that I picked up the word "overman" by the way, and that man is something that must be overcome-that man is a bridge and no end: proclaiming himself blessed in view of his noon and evening, as the way to new dawns-Zarathustra's word of the great noon, and whatever else I hung up over man like the last crimson light of evening.

    The 'Superman' in Sri Aurobindo & Nietzsche Tusar N Mohapatra 2005

  • Essentially, his model offers us five types of hero we could label god, demigod, overman, everyman, nobody.

    A Theory of Modes and Modalities Hal Duncan 2009

  • What we begin to see here is not a simple schema of relative social status — overman, everyman or nobody — but rather a set of protagonist types defineable by the interrelations of the deontic modalities that act upon them and the boulomaic modalities they enact.

    Archive 2009-07-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • A creature of idyll and elegy, he's defined by his youth (and loss (like Daphnis)) -- a puer aeternus who can't be a conventional tragic hero in the overman sense because he's not yet reached the age where he * gets* the deontic modalities society would wrap him up in.

    A Theory of Modes and Modalities Hal Duncan 2009

  • Essentially, his model offers us five types of hero we could label god, demigod, overman, everyman, nobody.

    Archive 2009-07-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • What we begin to see here is not a simple schema of relative social status — overman, everyman or nobody — but rather a set of protagonist types defineable by the interrelations of the deontic modalities that act upon them and the boulomaic modalities they enact.

    A Theory of Modes and Modalities Hal Duncan 2009

  • The protagonist of legend can be seen as, relatively speaking, the overman of high mimetic or everyman of low mimetic, while the protagonists of gothic/horror may be seen as, again relatively speaking, everyman of low mimetic or nobody of ironic.

    A Theory of Modes and Modalities Hal Duncan 2009

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