super
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈsypɑ/
ipa: /ˈs(j)uːpə(ɹ)/
ipa: /ˈsu.pɚ/
ipa: [ˈsʉu̯.pɚ]
ipa: /ˈsʉː.pə(ɹ)/
ipa: [ˈsïɯ.pə(ɹ)]
homophone: souper stripped-by-parse_pron_post_template_fn
rhymes: -uːpə(ɹ)
Forms: form: supers
Etymology: Abbreviation by shortening.
Senses: examples: text: Jane looked forward to collecting a large super payout when she retired.
text: “I want to make it clear, compassionate release of super should only be considered as a last resort, where all other options of paying for the eligible expenses have been exhausted,” she said.
ref: 2025 October 16, Melissa Davey, “Australians took more than $1.4bn from their super last year for everything from weight loss to dental work”, in The Guardian, Guardian Media Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, retrieved 16 Oct 2025:
glosses: Clipping of superannuation.
examples: text: The performances and cost ranges of three classes of commercial supercomputers are given in Table 2.1. The full-scale supers are the most expensive class, represented by Cray, ETA, and Fujitsu systems, for example.
ref: 1989, Kai Hwang, Doug DeGroot, Parallel processing for supercomputers and artificial intelligence:
glosses: Clipping of supercomputer.
examples: For quotations using this term, see Citations:super.
topics: comics
literature
media
publishing
glosses: Clipping of superhero.
examples: text: There may be thirty to fifty supers in every outyard, and we have only about half an hour to get them off the hives, stacked and covered before the bees get really cross about what we are doing.
ref: 1983, Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions, Boston, MA: Mariner Books, published 1999, →ISBN, page 69:
topics: agriculture
beekeeping
business
lifestyle
glosses: Clipping of superhive.
glosses: Clipping of superintendent, especially, a building's resident manager (sometimes clarified as “building super”).
examples: For quotations using this term, see Citations:super.
glosses: Clipping of supernaturalist, especially as distinguished from bright.
examples: text: For this scene, a large number of supers are engaged, and in order to further swell the crowd, practically all the available stage hands have to ‘walk on’ dressed in various coloured dominoes, and all wearing masks.
ref: 1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Affair at the Novelty Theatre”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020:
text: The piece was gave by a bunch o’ supers the time I went. I’d like to see it with a real cast. They say it’s a whiz when it’s acted right.
ref: 1916, Ring W. Lardner, “Three Kings and a Pair”, in The Saturday Evening Post:
glosses: Clipping of supernumerary; (theater) specifically, a supernumerary actor.
examples: text: That is a lot of ship, about the size of big tankers before they grew so rapidly to become supers, mammoths and oilbergs.
ref: 1973, Jeffrey Potter, Disaster by Oil, page 46:
glosses: Clipping of supertanker.
glosses: Clipping of supervisor.
examples: text: Supers are superimposed words that run across the TV screen and provide information such as the names of interview subjects. The newsroom sends a printed list of these supers to Perry.
ref: 2009, James Robert Parish, Jim Henson, page 114:
topics: broadcasting
media
television
glosses: A superimposed caption or image.