supercriticaladj.

1610 P. Holland tr. W. Camden Brit. i. 687 By our Critickes good leave (who..presuming so much of their great wits are supercriticall).

1661 J. Gauden Considerations Liturgy 25 These supercritical censors.

1720 S. Fancourt Ess. Certainty & Infallibility 11 What a super-critical Remark is here!

1748 A. Hooke Diss. Antiq. Bristol 36 What puts it beyond all Dispute that the Monk was in the right, is, its never having been doubted till the last Super-critical Age.

1824 M. MacDermot Beauties Mod. Lit. 134 Without being super-critical, we can perceive only three faults in the following lines.

1843 Godey's Lady's Bk. Nov. 225/1 Even Mr. Curmudgeon,..that splenetic and supercritical bachelor,..for once granted that it was a fine day.

1937 Evening News 12 Feb. 11/1 Only the super-critical..audience of the West End still look coolly on their simple robust brand of humour.

1966 Evening News (Sault Sainte Marie, Mich.) 2 Sept. 6/6 You lambasted parents for being super-critical of children.

2004 S. Wales Evening Post (Nexis) 9 Feb. 15 A large chunk of the media is super critical of everything Mr Blair does.

1894 Proc. Internat. Electr. Congr. Chicago 1893 255 Since a linear relation is found to exist between the reluctivity and magnetizing force in iron, above the critical intensity, two such observations are theoretically sufficient to determine the reluctivity of the sample for supercritical magnetizing forces.

1911 Electr. World 18 Nov. 1222/2 A phosphorescent glow emanates from the wire, extending radially outwards to a distance depending on the supercritical voltage.

1989 I. Sugar in E. Neumann et al. Electroporation & Electrofusion Cell Biol. vi. 104 Upon application of a supercritical voltage, opening of the pores takes place, resulting in the equilibrium porous phase.

2003 Trans. Inst. Brit. Geographers 28 241/1 Possibly..this is an example of self-organization, with a cluster of cutoffs occurring at a supercritical value.

1911 G. S. Williams in M. Merriman Amer. Civil Engineers' Pocket Bk. ix. 844 The critical velocity occupies a considerable range depending upon whether the flow is changing from sub-critical velocity to super-critical velocity flow, or vice versa.

1939 Current Hydraul. Res. U.S. (U.S. Nat. Bureau of Standards) 110 The analysis of the curved flow presented is based upon the physical similarity between supercritical open-channel flow and two-dimensional supersonic flow of compressible fluids.

1958 Adv. in Appl. Mech. 5 345 The pressure ratio across a nozzle was supercritical.

1967 Aviation Week 24 July 25/1 Whitcomb describes the shape as a ‘supercritical airfoil’ because it enables aircraft in subsonic flight to achieve these higher critical Mach numbers before the normal drag rise is experienced in transonic flight.

1979 Time 2 Apr. 21/2 With only two engines and a ‘supercritical’ wing that cuts aerodynamic drag, it is the most fuel-efficient commercial jet flying today.

2004 N. D. Gordon et al. Stream Hydrol. (ed. 2) vi. 162/2 The direction of wave propagation can be used to locate regions of subcritical, critical and supercritical flow in a stream.

1922 Jrnl. Geol. (Chicago) 30 661 At the temperature interval Q–P there exists a gas (H₂O in supercritical condition with some dissolved silicate in gas-formed condition) from which more or less silicate may crystallize directly from the gas.

1968 New Scientist 27 June 697/1 Supercritical boilers probably present more problems.

1972 Physics Bull. Apr. 236 The use of supercritical helium for cooling superconducting and other low temperature equipment.

1994 N.Y. Times 11 Sept. f7/2 The food industry has made use of supercritical carbon dioxide to decaffeinate coffee.

2007 Nature 25 Jan. 350/2 The ultimate idea is to pump supercritical CO₂ into porous sedimentary rocks.

1945 Chem. & Metall. Engin. Sept. (unnumbered section between pp. 88 and 102) The critical mass must be created at the moment of explosion. The Smyth Report suggests that this can be accomplished by breaking down the charge into two or more well-separated parts, each having less than the critical mass. At the appointed moment these could be brought together within the bomb to create a supercritical mass, which would then explode automatically.

1948 Bull. Atomic Scientists May 155/3 One had two or more subcritical fragments and had to bring them together so as to achieve a supercritical total mass.

1950 S. Glasstone Sourcebk. Atomic Energy xiv. 394/2 The presence of stray neutrons in the atmosphere makes it impossible to prevent a chain reaction in a supercritical mass.

1958 J. Cleugh tr. R. Jungk Brighter than Thousand Suns xii. 191 If he..was not quite quick enough in breaking contact, the mass might become ‘super-critical’ and produce a nuclear explosion.

2006 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 25 May 43/2 In a bomb the fissionable material passed through three stages: subcritical, critical, and supercritical.