superambient

English

Etymology

super- +‎ ambient

Adjective

superambient (comparative more superambient, superlative most superambient)

1. Of a fluid that circulates or is located above.
   • 1867, American Society of Naturalists, The American Naturalist‎^[1], American Society of Naturalists, University of Chicago Press, page 81:

     They are both bottom dwellers of necessity, although they take occasional excursions into the superambient water, but quickly fall back, from the force of gravity, to the bottom. These excursions into the superambient liquid are effected by the motion of the caudal fin from side to side.

2. Of physical quantity: superior to the immediate surroundings; exceeding the general level of the environment.
   • 1858, John Jack, Proverbial Philosophy: A Book of Thoughts and Arguments Originally Treated‎^[2], W. P. Nimmo, page 282:

     But though thus secluded almost from the cheering radiance of the sun, and bound as a felon in the mystic fetters of enchantment, the untiring vessel, yielding to the auspicious influence of the atmosphere, progressed in dashing style over the restless billows of the main. Mo mysterious incantation impeded her onward velocity; no spell wrapt the senses of the vigilant mariners; no flood of preternatural light rushed with dazzling glare on their humid vision; no burst of thunder rent the superambient elements, and poured its deafening roar on their listening ears; and no terrific whirlwind howled in the bending cordage or deranged the inflated canvas.

   • 1859, Martin Farquhar Tupper, Proverbial Philosophy: A Book of Thoughts and Arguments Originally Treated‎^[3], E. O. Libby, page 262:

     And so the pinions flapped away, the dreadful cavalcade of clouds followed, we broke the waterspout, raced the whirlwind, hunted the thunder to his caverns, rushed through the light and wind-tost mountains of the snow, pierced with a crash the thick sea of ice, that like a globe of hollow glass separates earth and its atmosphere from superambient space, and flying forward through the airless void, lighted on another world.

   • 1880, American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Michels, Science‎^[4], American Society of Naturalists, University of Chicago Press, page 464:

     The two cases are really very similar. In both there is equal molecular transfer backwards and forwards across the bounding surface. In the one a transfer from that solution to the semi-permeable medium and back from it into the solution. In the other a transfer from the solution into the superambient vapor and back from it into the solution.

   • 1894, The Argonaut‎^[5], Argonaut Public Company, page 10:

     It mostly consists in singing, interspersed with a little dancing. Nobody pays any attention to either, as the singing is all dispersed and lost in the superambient ether and the dancing is generally poor.

   • 1913, British Medical Association, British Medical Journal‎^[6], London British Medical Association, page 189:

     It must be admitted, however, that the samples have been of the best kind, the wet intervals being accompanied by a pleasant warm and yet bracing quality in the air, the streets drying quickly and the succeeding sunshine leaving no doubt as to the clarity of the superambient atmosphere.

References

• “superambient”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.