supercharacter

From super- +‎ character.

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supercharacter (plural supercharacters)

1. A superhero or supervillain.
   • 1981, David Cowart, Thomas L. Wymer, Twentieth-century American Science-fiction Writers, page 134:

     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.

   • 1987, The Comics Journal - Issue 114; Issues 123-125, page 127:

     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 product's novelty could die away.

   • 2014, Elizabeth Brooker, Mindy Blaise, Susan Edwards, SAGE Handbook of Play and Learning in Early Childhood, →ISBN, page 15:

     He asserted that, by taking on the role of a super[-]character (e.g. Spiderman) or an adult who is powerful in their lives (e.g. the doctor), children experience the leadership and power position of those individuals.

2. (genetics) An amalgamation of characters that respond to the same selective pressure.
   • 1986, Behavior genetics - Volume 16, page 206:

     The combination of characters contributing to the supercharacter need not be logically or genetically related.

   • 2012, O.A. Rognli, E.T. Solberg, I. Schjelderup, Breeding Fodder Crops for Marginal Conditions, →ISBN:

     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, M.D. Hayward, N.O. Bosemark, T. Romagosa, Plant Breeding: Principles and prospects, →ISBN, page 18:

     Under natural selection the supercharacter must equate with fitness of the phenotype in a particular environment; where fitness is defined in the Darwinian sense of the capacity to survive and leave offspring.

   • 2013, Kenneth Mather, John L. Jinks, Biometrical Genetics: The Study of Continuous Variation, →ISBN, page 47:

     These, together with yield, may be taken as components of a supercharacter which is itself the overall merit of the plant.

3. (mathematics) A single entity that represents multiple irreducible characters but is treated as a single character in the algebraic theory of Carlos André.
   • 2015, A. N. Panov, “Supercharacters for the finite groups of triangular type”, in arXiv‎:

     The supercharacter analog of the A.A.

4. A group of characters in a play, movie, or story, that act together as a single combined entity.
   • 1988, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Chaucer's The knight's tale, page 53:

     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.

   • 2001, Jonathan Rosenhead, John Mingers, Rational Analysis for a Problematic World Revisited, →ISBN:

     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.

   • 2015, James William Bryant, Acting Strategically Using Drama Theory, →ISBN, page 80:

     In either case, the characters must manage as best they can to work forward from this understanding, perhaps to discuss the details of some agreement, perhaps to prepare for hostilities, perhaps to cope with a gradient by bolstering a flimsy justification. There are clearly many possibilities. One is that the exchanges succeed in building a 'supercharacter'; that is a stable coalition between previously independent parties, genuinely sharing a position and being so sure of their relationship that they have no need to consider its failure.

5. Something that pervades a story as a common theme or presence, transcending the level of individual characters.
   • 1957, Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay and the Gioconda Smile, page xii:

     As one critic has astutely noted, ideas in Huxley's novels assume the role of "supercharacters."

   • 1969, Hartwig Isernhagen, Sensation, vision and imagination:

     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.

   • 2007, Arthena E. Gorospe, Narrative and Identity: An Ethical Reading of Exodus 4, →ISBN, page 58:

     Ricoeur describes God as “the metahero of a metahistory,” the “superagent” or “supercharacter” in the founding events encompassing creation, the patriarchal sojourning, the wilderness wandering, deliverance, conquest and settlement of the land, and the monarchy.

• "Supercharacter theory" on the Groupprops wiki