Definitions

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

  • adjective Extending or being beyond the world or the limits of the universe.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Being beyond the world, or beyond the limits of the solar system: as, ultramundane spaces.
  • Being beyond this world, or the physical sphere of existence.

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

  • adjective Being beyond the world, or beyond the limits of our system.

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

  • adjective extraordinary; abnormal
  • adjective extraterrestrial; outside of earth or the universe

Etymologies

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

[Latin ultrāmundānus : ultrā-, ultra- + mundānus, of the world; see mundane.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin ultra + mundanus.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word ultramundane.

Examples

  • Eddie TulasiewiczLondon• Some of us can only dream of appearing in a crossword clue Letters, 15 February, but the bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf did once call me the Keith Flett of the Church of England, which, as episcopal imprimaturs go, is surely approaching ultramundane.

    Letters: Facts are sacred 2011

  • “To ask why there is perception and appetite in simple substances is to inquire about something ultramundane, so to speak, and to demand reasons of God why he has willed things to be such as we conceive them to be” (GP ii, 271/L 538).

    Leibniz on Causation Bobro, Marc 2009

  • The tempter asks Jesus to make himself superior to God; Jesus's rejection of that temptation, Ratzinger suggests, reminds us that "to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself, too" - a suggestion confirmed by the murderous depredations of those twentieth-century totalitarians who made ultramundane gods out of themselves.

    A Jesus Beyond Politics 2007

  • For, although in the abstract we all love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked souls into some ultramundane warehouse of soul-less bodies and told to select one to our liking, we should each choose a handsome one, and never think of the consequences, -- it is quite certain that beauty carries an atmosphere of repulsion as well as of attraction with it, alike in both sexes.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 31, May, 1860 Various

  • Nature regulating ultramundane phenomena, as fixed, as invariable, as those which decide the succession of geological phenomena and the products of chemical combinations.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 71, September, 1863 Various

  • Charles Knollys was gone, utterly gone; no more to be met with by his girl-wife, save as spirit to spirit, soul to soul, in ultramundane place.

    Mrs. Knollys 1907

  • For, although in the abstract we all love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked souls into some ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies and told to select one to our liking, we should each choose a handsome one, and never think of the consequences, -- it is quite certain that beauty carries an atmosphere of repulsion as well as of attraction with it, alike in both sexes.

    Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • For, although in the abstract we all love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked souls into some ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies and told to select one to our liking, we should each choose a handsome one, and never think of the consequences, -- it is quite certain that beauty carries an atmosphere of repulsion as well as of attraction with it, alike in both sexes.

    Elsie Venner Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • Pray who can tell what would be the consequence of a visit from some of the inhabitants of Saturn, or the Georgium Sidus, should they open up their ultramundane treasures in sight of the British court?

    A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13 Robert Kerr 1784

  • If they perceive its animal basis they cannot conceive its ideal affinities or understand what is meant by calling it divine; if they perceive its ideality and see the immortal essences that swim into its ken, they hotly deny that it is an animal faculty, and invent ultramundane places and bodiless persons in which it is to reside; as if those celestial substances could be, in respect to thought, any less material than matter or, in respect to vision and life, any less instrumental than bodily organs.

    The Life of Reason George Santayana 1907

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Beyond the world; spiritual.

    May 16, 2008

  • It‘s no term of slighting disdain;

    Like “out of this world” it’s no stain.

    Without taint of “boring”

    But downright adoring,

    It’s good to be ultramundane!

    May 22, 2018