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superiority
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
superiority
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
moral superiority (=the idea that you are morally right and other people are not)
▪ He connects high social class with moral superiority.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
intellectual
▪ The revolutionary intelligentsia became fanatically convinced of its own exclusive moral and intellectual superiority.
▪ I at once sensed the physical austerity and the quality of social and intellectual superiority characteristic of the best public schools.
▪ The intellectual form of superiority was the one most accessible to me both at home and at school.
▪ But, we are bound to add, its intellectual superiority is by no means plain.
male
▪ Machismo is an exaggerated cult of virility which expresses itself in male assertions of superiority over females, and competition between men.
▪ These dichotomies can be seen as a way of legitimizing both male superiority and the abuse of science.
military
▪ Despite the military superiority of the government forces, the rebels continued to hold on to territory in the south.
▪ But none of this would have succeeded without a fourth and crucial ingredient, military superiority.
moral
▪ Pip now falls into a snobbish habit of connecting high social status with moral superiority.
▪ Underlying this hostility was a profound belief in the ethical and moral superiority of collective welfare provision.
▪ Serving large helpings, I ate nothing myself and my abstinence was only another proof of my moral superiority.
▪ Pleasure will be an adult privilege, a mark of economic power, class status and moral superiority.
▪ In one area, however, she does come into her own, since she has spiritual strength and moral superiority.
▪ Of Canon Wheeler's moral superiority to herself she was unconvinced.
▪ The preservationists, pinning their faith to moral superiority and persuasive argument, were beaten back every time.
▪ Albert has no doubts about the moral and social superiority of the latter.
numerical
▪ With their numerical superiority, they should have shown more enterprise.
▪ Each time, the opponents possessed a numerical superiority in men, frequently a very large one.
▪ It is a story of courage and of improvisation that made a nonsense of the enemy's numerical and material superiority.
▪ The loss of numerical superiority by protestants would result in the collapse of their statelet.
racial
▪ Swiney proposed that women's racial superiority was evidenced both by their physical and mental capabilities and in their internal cellular composition.
▪ The Holocaust shows what happened when the Western doctrine of racial superiority was taken to its ultimate extreme.
▪ I believe that the major discontinuity lies in the discursive forms through which positions of racial superiority are constructed.
▪ One of these beliefs may be racial superiority, but does not have to be.
social
▪ I at once sensed the physical austerity and the quality of social and intellectual superiority characteristic of the best public schools.
▪ It is not my experience that dominant males have ever had too much difficulty accepting their social superiority.
▪ Albert has no doubts about the moral and social superiority of the latter.
▪ Coercive reform is associated with groups that feel threatened, with groups that feel their social superiority is being challenged or diminished.
technological
▪ Two of the attacking aircraft were destroyed in an engagement which underlined the technological superiority of the allied weapons systems.
▪ The United States overestimated its technological superiority and underestimated the nationalist passion of its enemy.
■ NOUN
air
▪ A big effort was mounted against airfields, radars and anti-aircraft batteries in an attempt to gain air superiority.
▪ How were those Independent Companies to operate from a ship as their base if the enemy had air superiority?
▪ Last year we were reminded of those epic days when Fighter Command denied the Luftwaffe air superiority in the skies over Britain.
▪ Furthermore, the need to win air superiority over the battlefield was as vital as ever.
■ VERB
assert
▪ The new pope did not share the general goodwill towards Frederick, and wanted to assert the superiority of pope over emperor.
▪ There, Arazi asserted his superiority, prompting Corals to quote him 4-1 to complete the Kentucky-Epsom Derby double.
demonstrate
▪ Thirdly in the eyes of the regime, victory demonstrates the superiority of Marxist ethics over the bourgeois variety.
prove
▪ He held his portable telephone like a shield, it proved his power and superiority.
▪ They proved their superiority every day by handling risk better than the rest of the risk-taking world.
▪ Western propaganda continued to embarrass the Communists by loudly proclaiming that the flow of refugees proved the superiority of capitalism.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
assert your rights/independence/superiority etc
▪ And the revolution in the structure of services and management meant elderly frail people found it increasingly difficult to assert their rights.
▪ Athens asserted her rights over her citizens temporarily exiled, as she did over those at home and liable for service.
▪ But she sought not so much to break a taboo as to assert her independence from the male yoke.
▪ Mrs Armitage's heir is already asserting his rights in the matter but that is not my concern.
▪ Power gives us the ability to control, to choose and to assert our independence.
▪ Stickers are available throughout the county to help squeezed out pedestrians assert their rights.
▪ You need to be selective and judge when it is appropriate to assert your rights.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ In other words, Schott gives smart folks the air of superiority they paid all that college tuition to obtain.
▪ It dramatized the superiority of ironclad warships over wooden ones.
▪ Machismo is an exaggerated cult of virility which expresses itself in male assertions of superiority over females, and competition between men.
▪ The superiority of the Macintosh system would win converts.
▪ The feeling of inferiority is defensively turned into a feeling of superiority.
▪ The symbols had a tinge of feminine superiority, an aura of vast power that was taken for granted.
▪ Thirdly in the eyes of the regime, victory demonstrates the superiority of Marxist ethics over the bourgeois variety.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Superiority

Superiority \Su*pe`ri*or"i*ty\, n. [Cf. F. sup['e]riorit['e], LL. superioritas.] The quality, state, or condition of being superior; as, superiority of rank; superiority in merit.

Syn: Pre["e]minence; excellence; predominancy; prevalence; ascendency; odds; advantage.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
superiority

late 15c., from superior (adj.) + -ity, or directly from Medieval Latin superioritatem (nominative superioritas), from superior.

Wiktionary
superiority

n. the state of being superior

Related phrases:
WordNet
superiority

  1. n. the quality of being superior [syn: high quality] [ant: inferiority, inferiority]

  2. the quality of being a competitive advantage [syn: favorable position, favourable position]

  3. displaying a sense of being better than others; "he hated the white man's superiority and condescension"

  4. the state of excelling or surpassing or going beyond usual limits [syn: transcendence, transcendency]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Superiority (short story)

"Superiority" is a science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1951. It depicts an arms race, and shows how the side which is more technologically advanced can be defeated, despite its apparent superiority, because of its own organizational flaws and its willingness to discard old technology without having fully perfected the new. Meanwhile, the enemy steadily built up a far larger arsenal of weapons that while more primitive were also more reliable. The story was at one point required reading for an industrial design course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "superiority".

But, to say the truth, there is a more simple and plain method of accounting for that prodigious superiority of penetration which we must observe in some men over the rest of the human species, and one which will serve not only in the case of lovers, but of all others.

I really do, that I, to say the most of myself, am nothing more than the peer of our friend from Randolph, I shall regard the gentleman from Coles as decidedly my superior also, and consequently, in the course of what I shall have to say, whenever I shall have occasion to allude to that gentleman, I shall endeavor to adopt that kind of court language which I understand to be due to decided superiority.

It proves the moral superiority of the poor, for the rich hoard all their wealth to themselves while the poor are willing to share their largesse of antimony with anybody.

Even faction, and religious faction, was constrained to acknowledge the superiority of his genius, in peace as well as in war, and to confess, with a sigh, that the apostate Julian was a lover of his country, and that he deserved the empire of the world.

Their officers asserted the superiority of rank by a more profuse and elegant luxury.

In this double proportion of honors, the conqueror asserted the superiority of his arms and power.

Instead of asserting his just superiority above the imperfect heroism and profane philosophy of Trajan and the Antonines, the mature age of Constantine forfeited the reputation which he had acquired in his youth.

They deploy air assets in waves of overwhelming numbers--you know how they are, they always have to have numerical superiority.

One was convinced and believed and assented because it was gratifying and delightful to think and feel and believe in unison with an intellect of such evident superiority.

An ambassador was sent to London with representations of the imminent dangers which threatened the republic, and he was ordered to solicit in the most pressing terms the assistance of his Britannic majesty, that the allies might have a superiority in the Netherlands by the beginning of the campaign.

Culture from its old pride of exclusiveness and feeling of unconscious superiority.

And down South, with the old-line Whigs, with the Kentuckians, the Virginians and the Tennesseeans, he tells you that there is a physical difference between the races, making the one superior, the other inferior, and he is in favor of maintaining the superiority of the white race over the negro.

Mothe to an engagement, notwithstanding his superiority in number of ships and weight of metal.

I was still indulging in casual fantasies about the Garridan, even as I discussed with Outher the superiority of Fallsend chicken-meat to Fallsend pork.

Impartial looker-on sees clearer than the player Learn to obey, that later you may know how to command Man has nothing harder to endure than uncertainty Many creditors are so many allies One should give nothing up for lost excepting the dead Our thinkers are no heroes, and our heroes are no sages Overbusy friends are more damaging than intelligent enemies Prepare sorrow when we come into the world The experienced love to signify their superiority We quarrel with no one more readily than with the benefactor UARDA Volume 4.