transcend

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

• IPA^(key): /tɹæn(t)ˈsɛnd/

• Audio (US):

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• 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.

   We cannot transcend what we refuse to face.

   • a. 1627 (date written), Francis [Bacon], “Considerations Touching a Warre with Spaine. […]”, in William Rawley, editor, Certaine Miscellany Works 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.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “transcend”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.