Transhuman
adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An enhanced human:; An individual having characteristics transitional between a human and a posthuman species. countable, uncountable
"In the same way that a transhuman is a transitional human, Christians are also humans in transition, living in a kingdom that has come and yet is coming, “strangers in the world.”"
- 2 An enhanced human:; An individual of a posthuman species. broadly, countable, uncountable
"On the coffee table rested a sculpture of the fundamental, recombinant DNA of the present transhumans."
- 3 A being that transcends humanity; a superhuman being. countable, uncountable
"I bet every critter that thinks it thinks—even the transhumans—worry about how to do right for themselves and the ones they love."
- 1 More than human; superhuman.
"Turning fallible human foot soldiers into transhuman machines who need neither sleep nor food, and are incapable of resistance and independent thought, is a Napoleonic dream ."
- 2 Related to transhumanism.
"I believe that this is important, because taken in isolation the kind of enhancements portrayed by transhuman philosophers might seem relatively innocuous."
- 3 Involving something beyond the merely human; transcending human limitations or boundaries.
"Near-synonym: posthuman (sometimes synonymous)"
Synonyms
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More examples"Maybe hope for a better tomorrow, as in the document "Transhuman Perfection: The Eradication of Disability Through Transhuman Technologies.""
Etymology
From trans- + human, also attested as trans-human in the 1950s. Attributed to Teilhard de Chardin, as French trans-humain (noun, sometimes capitalised as (le) Trans-humain), who used it alongside ultra-humain (“the ultra-human”). As a countable English noun (plural transhumans) introduced by F. M. Esfandiary in the 1960s (here trans- is short for transitional).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.