transcendental

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Philosophy Concerned with the a priori or intuitive basis of knowledge as independent of experience.
2. adj. Philosophy Asserting a fundamental irrationality or supernatural element in experience.
3. adj. Surpassing all others; superior.
4. adj. Beyond common thought or experience; mystical or supernatural.
5. adj. Mathematics Of or relating to a real or complex number that is not the root of any polynomial that has positive degree and rational coefficients.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Same as transcendent, 1.
2. In philosophy: In Aristotelian philosophy, extending beyond the bounds of a single category. The doctrine implied is that every strictly univocal predicate is contained under one of the ten predicaments; but there are certain predicates, as being (ens), one, true, good, which are univocal in a modified but not very clearly defined sense, which extend over all the predicaments or categories.
3. In Cartesian philosophy, predicable both of body and of spirit.
4. Pertaining to the existence in experience of a priori elements; a priori. This is chiefly a Kantian term, but was also used by Dugald Stewart. See Kantianism, category, a priori.
5. In Schellingistic philosophy, explaining matter and all that is objective as a product of subjective mind.
6. Abstrusely speculative; beyond the reach of ordinary, every-day, or common thought and experience; hence, vague; obscure; fantastic; extravagant.
7. Not capable of being produced by the algebraical operations of addition, multiplication, involution, and their inverse operations. The commonest transcendental functions are e, log x, sin x, etc.
8. Knowledge a priori.
9. The value of a transcendental function.
10. A first principle.
11. n. A transcendent conception, such as thing, something, one, true. good.

Wiktionary

1. n. obsolete A transcendentalist.
2. adj. philosophy Concerned with the a priori or intuitive basis of knowledge, independent of experience.
3. adj. Superior, surpassing all others.
4. adj. Extraordinary.
5. adj. Mystical or supernatural.
6. adj. mathematics, number theory Of, or relating to a number that is not the root of any polynomial that has positive degree and rational coefficients.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Supereminent; surpassing others.
2. adj. (Philos.) In the Kantian system, of or pertaining to that which can be determined a priori in regard to the fundamental principles of all human knowledge. What is transcendental, therefore, transcends empiricism; but is does not transcend all human knowledge, or become transcendent. It simply signifies the a priori or necessary conditions of experience which, though affording the conditions of experience, transcend the sphere of that contingent knowledge which is acquired by experience.
3. adj. Vaguely and ambitiously extravagant in speculation, imagery, or diction.
4. n. obsolete A transcendentalist.

WordNet 3.0

1. adj. existing outside of or not in accordance with nature
2. adj. of or characteristic of a system of philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical and material