Definitions

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

  • adjective Celestial; heavenly.
  • adjective Of, coming from, or being in the sky or high above.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Being in a higher or upper place; situated above: as, supernal regions.
  • Relating to things above; celestial; heavenly.
  • In zoology, superior in position; situated high up: as, the supernal nostrils of a bird.

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

  • adjective Being in a higher place or region; locally higher.
  • adjective Relating or belonging to things above; celestial; heavenly.

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

  • adjective Pertaining to heaven or to the sky; celestial.
  • adjective Exalted, exquisite, superlative.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective being or coming from on high
  • adjective of heaven or the spirit

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin supernus; see uper in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French supernel or Medieval Latin supernālis, from Latin supernus.

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Examples

  • We call the supernal lights fixed, yet they wander about yonder plain, and if

    The Last Man 2003

  • We call the supernal lights fixed, yet they wander about yonder plain, and if I look again where I looked an hour ago, the face of the eternal heavens is altered.

    I.8 1826

  • We call the supernal lights fixed, yet they wander about yonder plain, and if I look again where I looked an hour ago, the face of the eternal heavens is altered.

    The Last Man 1826

  • We call the supernal lights fixed, yet they wander about yonder plain, and if I look again where I looked an hour ago, the face of the eternal heavens is altered.

    The Last Man Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 1824

  • The second obvious element in Shelley's poetry is his love of beauty, not the common beauty of nature or humanity which Wordsworth celebrated, but a strange "supernal" beauty with no "earthly" quality or reality.

    Outlines of English and American Literature : an Introduction to the Chief Writers of England and America, to the Books They Wrote, and to the Times in Which They Lived William Joseph Long 1909

  • In the tiny chalets perched on the mountain ridges, folks literally dwell in cloudland, and enjoy a kind of supernal existence, having for near neighbours the eagles in their eyries and the fleet-footed chamois or izard.

    In the Heart of the Vosges And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" Matilda Betham-Edwards 1877

  • Even if they had shown a pristine 35 print on 40-foot-high silver using a brand-new bulb, it wouldn't have looked "supernal" in the least.

    In The Company Of Glenn 2009

  • For similar reasons, most people, especially most who believe in Heaven, also consider Heaven, or whatever, as a special kind of supernal real estate, as Owen Gingerich, author of the foreword to a recent English edition of Johannes Kepler's

    LaRouche's Latest 2009

  • a kind of supernal visitant, vanishing anon into nothingness, or only a pawnbroker's duplicate.

    The Lovels of Arden 1875

  • Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.

    John W. Whitehead: Have a Very Merry Celluloid Christmas John W. Whitehead 2011

Comments

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  • supernal very lofty word

    August 31, 2007

  • The commonplace may hold truth's kernel
    And point the way to things supernal,
    So follow that arrow
    From a red wheelbarrow
    Or raise your eyes from Duchamp's urinal.

    August 19, 2016