über alles
über alles interjection: invokes a perception of the specified country as superior to others, or having a supreme status when compared to others.
Interjection
über alles
- Invokes a perception of the specified country as superior to others, or having a supreme status when compared to others.
- Similarly, British Finance Capitalism forced back to its last line of defence will cry: "Britain über alles" though for the moment, Socialism having neglected Scottish Nationalism [..]1967, Hugh MacDiarmid, The Company I've Kept, page 132
- Pax Americana and all that bullshit? Grissom said. 'America über alles. You want to make the rest of the world our slaves.'2008, Mike Hockney, Prohibition A, page 45
Origin of über alles
From the verse Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt (“Germany, Germany above all, above all in the world”), from the German national anthem Lied der Deutschen, composed by Joseph Haydn in 1797. The verse originally meant that the Germans and their rulers have to overcome existing divisions and keep in mind the goal of a unified Germany.
Questions about über alles
- What does über alles mean?
- Über alles means invokes a perception of the specified country as superior to others, or having a supreme status when compared to others.
- What part of speech is über alles?
- Über alles is an interjection.
Words near über alles in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: über alles (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “über alles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/%C3%BCber_alles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.