supercharacter

Noun

supercharacter (plural supercharacters)

1. A superhero or supervillain.
   • The Lensmen are shown, however, as a superior race, with advanced mental and physical powers, and there are few instances when mere humans appear in the stories or comment on these supercharacters.1981, David Cowart, Thomas L. Wymer, Twentieth-century American Science-fiction Writers, page 134
   • In very short order a flood of supercharacter lookalikes was being turned out by both Superman's publisher and the other publishers who, as publishers always do, vied with each other in rushing to market with hastily prepared imitations of each other's products in hopes of cleaning up before new...1987, The Comics Journal - Issue 114; Issues 123-125, page 127
2. An amalgamation of characters that respond to the same selective pressure.
   • The combination of characters contributing to the supercharacter need not be logically or genetically related.1986, Behavior genetics - Volume 16, page 206
   • Winter hardiness of plants is not a simple character, rather a supercharacter composed of several components whose impact will vary with the climatic conditions.2012, O.A. Rognli, E.T. Solberg, I. Schjelderup, Breeding Fodder Crops for Marginal Conditions, →ISBN
3. A single entity that represents multiple irreducible characters but is treated as a single character in the algebraic theory of Carlos André.
   • The supercharacter analog of the A.A.2015, A. N. Panov, “Supercharacters for the finite groups of triangular type”, in arXiv
4. A group of characters in a play, movie, or story, that act together as a single combined entity.
   • His separate existence, indeed, is now superfluous: the conflict over, his better qualities are incorporated in the lover who survives, the more mature stage of the supercharacter Palamon-Arcite-Emetreus-Lygurge.1988, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Chaucer's The knight's tale, page 53
   • As a result, characters often start to take common actions to achieve their aims and may start to act as a single 'supercharacter' with a single position.2001, Jonathan Rosenhead, John Mingers, Rational Analysis for a Problematic World Revisited, →ISBN
5. Something that pervades a story as a common theme or presence, transcending the level of individual characters.
   • As one critic has astutely noted, ideas in Huxley's novels assume the role of "supercharacters."1957, Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay and the Gioconda Smile, page xii
   • On the third, and "highest" level, there are images which are not merely recurrent but ever-present. One of these is Alexandria herself, the city which "lives" its inhabitants, the supercharacter of the book.1969, Hartwig Isernhagen, Sensation, vision and imagination