Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Celestial; heavenly.
- adj. Of, coming from, or being in the sky or high above.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- 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.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Being in a higher place or region; locally higher.
- adj. Relating or belonging to things above; celestial; heavenly.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. being or coming from on high
- adj. of heaven or the spirit
Etymologies
- From Old French supernel or Medieval Latin supernālis, from Latin supernus. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, from Latin supernus; see uper in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“We call the supernal lights fixed, yet they wander about yonder plain, and if”
“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 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.”
“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"
“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”
“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.”
“a kind of supernal visitant, vanishing anon into nothingness, or only a pawnbroker's duplicate.”
“Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.”
The Huffington Post: John W. Whitehead: Have a Very Merry Celluloid Christmas
“According to Ms. Krieger, only 1 tablespoon of sweet butter is needed to add supernal creaminess to her recipe for mashed potatoes.”
The Huffington Post: Rozanne Gold: Two Great Cooks, Two Great Cookbooks
“That is, the desire to realise an ideal, to touch the supernal, to create something greater than the human hand and mind can create, no matter how gifted those hands and minds might be.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘supernal’.
-
Up In The Air @ Wordnik
List of words, terms, and phrases pertaining to or referencing anything that lives, traverses, moves in, uses, or otherwise occupies the space above the ground we walk on. Words and phrases contain...
aeroallergen, aerial, aerial mapping, aerial root, aerobe, aerobiology, aerobioscope, aelophilous, anemotropism, anemoclastic, anafront, antitrades and 273 more...
-
phrontistery-s
from phrontistery.info
sabaton, sabbatarian, sabbulonarium, sabelline, sabin, sable, sabliere, sabot, sabretache, sabulous, saburration, saccade and 1593 more...
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
-
Relating To: The Sky
Words of, about, or relating to the heavens.
firmament, horizon, celestial, pleiades, supernal, welkin, cerulean, hypaethral, abatjour, upaithric, canopus, cerulific and 40 more...
-
Aeolus's Vocabulary
Words concerning or relating to wind, air, sky, or heavens! Anything concerning Aeolus (King of the Winds) will be collected here.
aeromancy, zephyr, favonius, boreas, ether, etesian, empyrean, wind, breeze, gust, cyclone, nor'easter and 18 more...
-
♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
-
Serendipity's Words
defenestration, mercurial, syzygy, wicked, iniquitous, metastable, demimonde, entropic, ephemeral, irreligious, frisbee, manifold and 474 more...
-
G...R...E
gross.
sybarite, restiveness, churl, nepotism, jingoism, pusillanimous, gaffe, incisive, enervate, bucolic, concomitant, abeyance and 158 more...
-
Vega's Logophile Dictionary
Words I've heard/read in use, words being learnt, words that I want to eventually use in everyday language, words that are high-brow and elitist and scholarly and obscure, words that display the wo...
parsimonious, torpor, recalcitrant, plebeian, vitriol, gumption, augur, aestival, celerity, diaphanous, farrago, nonpareil and 287 more...
-
Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
-
inkhorn's Words
inkhorn, aplomb, apotheosis, asinine, avatar, bombastic, boorish, bromide, bucolic, cagey, canvass, digress and 991 more...
-
The Whiteness of the Whale
Words in Melville's "Moby Dick"
grapnels, spile, pea coffee, farrago, grego, bosky, bombazine, brevet, cenotaph, cupidity, kelson, obliquity and 164 more...
-
Words Covered in Faery Dust (S)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
sabian symbols, saffron, sagacious, sage, salamander, sally lunn, salmon, salsify, salt water taffy, samhain, sand dollar, sandalwood and 270 more...
-
Pale Fire
Words gathered while reading Pale Fire.
larches, torquate, stillicide, vermiculate, preterist, theolatry, iridule, vulgarian, cloutish, lemniscate, torsion, trillium and 176 more...
-
List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
-
ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for supernal.
quotato supernal very lofty word Aug 31, 2007