Pl. -ia. [L., = eyebrow; ridge, summit; haughtiness, etc.]
1. The eyebrow. Obs. exc. Anat.
1672. Marvell, Reh. Transp., I. 200. I marked how your answerer looked when he spoke of the day of judgment. Very gravely … and yet without any depressing or exalting his superciliums.
b. Zool. A superciliary streak or marking.
1817. Stephens, Shaw’s Gen. Zool., X. I. 34. Chesnut red Manakin … supercilia whitish above, margined with black.
2. Arch. † a. A narrow fillet above the cymatium of a cornice. Obs. b. A fillet above and below the scotia of an Attic base. c. The lintel or transverse part of a door-case.
1563. Shute, Archit., E iij b. Geue .2. [partes] vnto Cymatium,… the seuenth parte is lefte for Supercilium or Regula.
1664. Evelyn, Acc. Archit., in Freart’s Archit., etc., 138. Corona is by some cal’d Supercilium, but rather I conceive Stillicidium the Drip.
1728. Chambers, Cycl., Supercilium, in the ancient Architecture, the uppermost Member of the Cornice; call’d by the Moderns, Corona, Crown, or Larmier. Ibid., s.v., Supercilium, is also used for a square Member under the upper Tore in some Pedestals. Some Authors confound it with the Tore itself.
1828–9. J. Narrien, Arch., in Encycl. Metrop. (1845), V. 290. The lintel, or supercilium, corresponds with the architrave; above the supercilium is a kind of frize, which he calls hyperthyrum, and, over this, a corona, or cornice. Ibid. The supercilium extends, right and left, beyond the exterior of the antepagmenta.
1850. Leitch, trans. C. O. Müller’s Anc. Art, § 281 (ed. 2), 311. The supercilium is similar to the architrave, and the hyperthyrum to the cornice.
3. Anat. The lip or margin of a bony cavity, esp. of the acetabulum.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Supercilium,… the lip or side of a Cavity or hollow Part at the end of a Bone, particularly a Cartilage or Gristle of the Coxendix or Hip-bone.
1733. G. Douglas, trans. Winslow’s Anat. (1756), I. 72. Besides what has been said of the Acetabulum in general, there are … the Edge called the Supercilium, the Cartilaginous Cavity [etc.].
1771. Encycl. Brit., I. 204/2. A little above the supercilium of the cotyloid cavity or acetabulum.
† 4. Superciliousness, haughtiness. Obs. rare–1.
1733. T. Steward, Ordin. Charge. Your general Behaviour should … no way discourage a becoming … Familiarity with you, by a lofty Supercilium, or a forbidding Austerity.
