transcend

From Middle English transcenden, from Old French transcender, from Latin transcendere (“to climb over, step over, surpass, transcend”), from trans (“over”) + scandere (“to climb”); see scan; compare ascend, descend.

• IPA^(key): /tɹæn(t)ˈsɛnd/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛnd

transcend (third-person singular simple present transcends, present participle transcending, simple past and past participle transcended)

1. (transitive) To pass beyond the limits of something.
   • a. 1627 (date written), Francis [Bacon], “Considerations Touching a VVarre vvith Spaine. […]”, in William Rawley, editor, Certaine Miscellany VVorks of the Right Honourable Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount S. Alban. […], London: […] I. Hauiland for Humphrey Robinson, […], published 1629, →OCLC:

     such personal popes, emperors, or elective kings, as shall transcend their limits

   • 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Virmire:

     Shepard: What do you want from us? Slaves? Resources?
     My kind transcends your very understanding. We are each a nation. Independent, free of all weakness. You cannot grasp the nature of our existence.

2. (transitive) To surpass, as in intensity or power; to excel.
   • c. 1698, John Dryden, Epitaph on the Monument of a Fair Maiden Lady:

     How much her worth transcended all her kind.

3. (obsolete) To climb; to mount.

   lights in the heavens transcending the region of the clouds

   • 1655, James Howell, “To Sir Tho. Haw.”, in Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ. Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren. […], 3rd edition, volume (please specify the page), London: […] Humphrey Mos[e]ley, […], →OCLC:

     your Muse soars up to the upper, and transcending that too, takes her fight among the Celestial bodies

• (to pass beyond the limits of something): exceed, overgo, surpass; see also Thesaurus:transcend
• (to surpass something): better, dwarf, eclipse; see also Thesaurus:exceed
• (to climb): ascend

• “transcend”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “transcend”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.