superbeing
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Pronunciation[edit]
- (UK) IPA(key): /ˈs(j)uːpəˈbiːɪŋ/
- (US) IPA(key): /ˈsupɚˈbiɪŋ/, /ˈsupɚˈbiŋ/
- Hyphenation: su‧per‧be‧ing
Noun[edit]
superbeing (plural superbeings)
- A human being or other living entity with enhanced abilities beyond those of a normal or real being of the same kind.
- 1931, The Modern Language Forum 1931-06: Volume 16 Issue 3[1], Modern and Classical Language Association, page 90:
- The detective’s appeal to the Spaniard probably lay in the fact that, like Don Juan, he was a superbeing. This is doubtless, too, the explanation of his attraction for the rest of humanity; but the interesting feature of his Spanish vogue is that in fiction and in drama he was elaborated, if not improved, upon.
- 1951, George Bosworth Burch, Early Medieval Philosophy[2], King's Crown Press, page 122:
- When they undertook to describe in words the ineffable nature of the supreme reality, Erigena called it the superbeing which is the being of all things; Anselm, that than which nothing greater can be thought; Abelard, a trinity of power, wisdom, and goodness; Bernard, the bridegroom of the soul; Isaac, that which exists through, of, and in itself.
- 1973, Edward H. Schafer, The Divine Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in T'ang Literature[3], North Point Press, →ISBN, page 14:
- Possibly such events were exceptional, but the activities of shamans among the masses of the people in early medieval times probably owe the little attention they have received to the failure of documentation. What we get in the best literature is an emphasis on the refined offshoots of shamans—the transcendent superbeings (hsien) of Taoism.
- 1979, George Bosworth Burch, Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing[4], Belknap Press of Harvard, →ISBN, page 141:
- Until the 1960s and 1970s when movie stars, comic-book superbeings, and other mythic figures threatened to crowd out more accessible models of behavior and understanding, the lawyer-hero and the writer-hero occupied an important place in the spectrum of postmartial heroism.
- 2005, Michael Ashley, Transformations: The History of the Science Fiction Magazine 1950 to 1970, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, page 133:
- It traces the growth of homo gestalt with the uniting of six lovely outcasts of society who have psi powers and come together as a hive mind, thus creating a gestalt super-being.