a. [ad. L. superincumbent-em, pr. pple. of superincumbĕre: see SUPER- 2 and INCUMBENT.] Lying or resting upon, or situated on the top of, something else; overlying. (Chiefly in scientific use.)
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., II. 105. The variation of the gravity of the Superincumbent Ayr.
1674. Petty, Disc. Dupl. Proportion, 17. Water-Divers … the lower they go, do find their stock of Air more and more to shrink; and that according to the Roots of the Quantities of the super-incumbent Water or Weight.
1785. Cowper, Lett. to J. Newton, 19 March. The round table, which we formerly had in use, was unequal to the pressure of my superincumbent breast and elbows.
1830. Lyell, Princ. Geol., xv. I. 281. The soft argillaceous substratum … hastens the dilapidation of the superincumbent mass of limestone.
1874. Hartwig, Aerial World (1875), i. 2. Air is a very elastic body, and, in consequence of the earth’s attraction, each superincumbent stratum presses upon all those below it.
predicative. 1842. Loudon, Suburban Hort., 485. The soil is generally light, but superincumbent on a subsoil, which is supplied with water.
b. Situated or suspended above; overhanging.
1835. T. Mitchell, Acharn. of Aristoph., 230, note. Above this mother earth … was seen stretched the superincumbent heaven.
a. 1845. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Ser. III. Jerry Jarvis’s Wig. Either side of the superincumbent banks was clothed with a thick mantle of tangled copsewood.
c. Of pressure: Exerted from above.
1854. Ronalds & Richardson, Chem. Technol. (ed. 2), I. 107. If … coke is prepared under considerable superincumbent pressure the blisters which form in the softened coal are pressed together.
1866. Roscoe, Elem. Chem., iv. 40. Water boils when the tension of its vapour is equal to the superincumbent atmospheric pressure.
d. fig.
1821. Shelley, Adonais, xxxii. A Power Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour.
1848. Clough, Amours de Voy., I. 35. A tyrannous sense of superincumbent oppression.
1875. E. White, Life in Christ, I. viii. (1878), 81. The superincumbent accumulations of pagan and mediæval thought.
Hence Superincumbently adv.
1796. Kirwan, Elem. Min. (ed. 2), II. 249. Fracture narrowly and divergingly striated, or superincumbently striated.
