superclassn.
/ˈsuːpəːklɑːs/, /ˈsuːpəːklas/, /ˈsjuːpəːklɑːs/, /ˈsjuːpəːklas/, U.S. /ˈsupərˌklæs/ 1.
a. Biology. A taxonomic category ranking above class and below subphylum; a group of this rank.
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1873 Amer. Naturalist 7 75 Häckel..does not consider the fishes as a group coördinate with any combination of other vertebrate classes.., opposing the (1) Cyclostoma in a ‘cladus’ or superclass (Hauptklasse Monorhina), coördinate with (2) another (Anamnia) containing the fishes..and Batrachians, and (3) a third (Amniota) embracing reptiles, birds and mammals.
1875 J. Fiske Outl. Cosmic Philos. II. xii. 51 The birds and reptiles resemble each other much more closely than either resembles the mammalia, so that Prof. Huxley joins them together in the super-class or province of sauroids.
1930 W. K. Gregory in E. V. Cowdry et al. Human Biol. & Racial Welfare iii. 67 The great classes Amphibia, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals..are collectively bracketed as the superclass Tetrapoda, or four-limbed animals.
1995 M. R. Berenbaum Bugs in Syst. i. 9 Diplopods and chilopods are often lumped together in a superclass called Myriapoda.
2002 P. Herring Biol. Deep Ocean App. 286 Arthropods..are grouped into three superclasses (considered by some to be phyla), the Crustacea.., Uniramia.., and Chelicerata.
b. gen. A set or category that is more inclusive than a class (or subclass) and contains two or more classes (or subclasses).
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1899 Amer. Anthropologist 1 658 All other students of native Australian society have..been overwhelmed by an apparently irresolvable nebula of overlapping classes and sub-classes and super-classes.
1914 Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 15 69 The least common superclass of the subclasses pi that occur in the sequence is denumerable.
1955 E. Reifler in W. N. Locke & A. D. Booth Machine Transl. Langs. ix. 153 For MT [= mechanical translation] purposes it is preferable to ignore the superclass of verbs and to consider only the subclasses of principal verbs and auxiliary verbs.
1991 Sci. Amer. (U.K. ed.) Oct. 69/2 (caption) Main belt asteroids may be divided into three superclasses: primitive, metamorphic and igneous.
2006 Introd. Database Managem. Syst. (ISRD Group) iv. 52 Attribute inheritance is the property by which subclass entities inherit values of all the attributes of the superclass entity.
2. A group or category of people or things considered to rank above others in some quality or respect; esp. a social class having great privilege, power, or influence, an elite.
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1911 Oral Hygiene May 364/1 Maybe..a race of supermen..will come about. But unless the super-class is to be enormously outnumbered by the rubbish, it will have to see to it that marriages take place early.
1912 Psychol. Bull. 9 393 The ‘like-to-like’ matings [of the upper classes] thus..create a super-class in the general population.
1925 N. S. B. Gras Hist. Agric. in Europe & Amer. i. 6 So important was the horse for the nomad that its possession constituted a superclass, the mounted nomads of history.
1978 Washington Post (Nexis) 10 Jan. D1 There were five world class players, and three in a stratospheric superclass.
1999 A. B. Feuer U.S. Navy World War I p. xii Though she was not in the same superclass as the Lusitania or the Justica, she was a very big ship in her day.
2008 D. Rothkopf (title) Superclass: the global power elite and the world they are making.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, June 2012; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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