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This article is about the German word. For further uses, see
Ãœber (disambiguation). For the surname and English homonym Uber, see
Uber (disambiguation).
Look up
über or
über- in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Ãœber (German pronunciation:
[?y?b?] (
listen), sometimes romanized as
ueber or
uber) is a
German language word meaning "above", "over" or "across." It is a
cognate of both Latin
super and Greek
???? (
hyper). It is also sometimes used as a hyphenated prefix in informal English, usually for emphasis. It is properly spelled with an
umlaut.
Contents
In German
In German,
über is used as a
prefix as well as a word in its own right. Both uses indicate a state or action involving increased elevation or quantity in the physical sense, or superiority or excess in the abstract.
elevation:
"überdacht" - roof-covered, roofed, [also: reconsidered, thought over]quantity:
"über 100 Meter" - more than 100 meters,
"Ãœberschall" - supersonicsuperiority:
"überlegen" - (adj) superior, elite, predominant. (verb) to considerexcess:
"übertreiben" - to exaggerate,
"überfüllt" - overcrowded
Ãœber may be a
preposition or an
adverb depending on context. E.g.
über etwas sprechen - to speak about something,
über die Brücke - across the bridge.
Ãœber also translates to
over,
above,
meta, but mainly in
compound words. The actual translation depends on context. One example would be
Nietzsche's term
Ãœbermensch, discussed below; another example is the
Deutschlandlied, which begins with the well-known words "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" meaning "Germany, Germany above everything" (this strophe is not sung anymore, because it is mistaken as meaning "Germany above the rest of the world"; its original meaning was the German nation above its constituent states [Prussia, Hanover, Württemberg etc.]).
The German word
unter, meaning
beneath or
under, is antonymous to
über.
Unter can be found in words such as
Untermensch,
U-Bahn (
Untergrundbahn = subway),
U-Boot (
Unterseeboot = submarine), as well as
toponyms, such as
Unter den Linden.
In English
Origins
The crossover of the term "über" from German into English goes back to the work of
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1883, Nietzsche coined the term "
Ãœbermensch" to describe the higher state to which he felt men might aspire. The term was
brought into English by
George Bernard Shaw in the title to his 1903 play
Man and Superman. During his rise to power,
Adolf Hitler adopted Nietzsche's term, using it in his descriptions of an Aryan
master race. It was in this context that
American Jewish comic book creator
Jerry Siegel encountered the term and conceived the 1933 story "
The Reign of the Super-Man", in which the Super-man (not to be confused with
DC Comic's Superman) is "an evil mastermind with advanced mental powers".
[1] Throughout the following decade, Siegel, and
Joseph Shuster, recast
Superman into the iconic American hero he subsequently became. It is through this association with Superman the hero that the term "über" carries much of its English sense implying irresistibility or invincibility.
[2]
Current popular culture
One of the first popular modern uses of the word as a synonym in English for
super was a
Saturday Night Live TV sketch in 1979. The sketch,
What if?, pondered the notion of what if the comic book hero
Superman had landed in
Nazi Germany when he first came from
Krypton. Rather than being called Superman, he took the name of Ãœberman.
[3] The term was also used in an episode of
Friends (season 1, episode 5, "The One with the East German Laundry Detergent"), when
Ross tries to impress
Rachel by showing her that he uses a German laundry detergent called "Ãœberweiss". In the Philippines, a reality show franchise called
Pinoy Big Brother has a segment show called Über that features extra scenes and discussions about the housemates and provides edited and comical footage. In the 2002 animated movie "Ice Age" Manfred the mammoth refers to Diego the sabre tooth cat as uber-tracker as they hunt the lone parent of the human baby that the trio has adopted. Quote: "Hey, über-tracker. Up front where I can see you."
During the 2000s,
über also became known as a
synonym for
super due to games and gamers excessively using the word; for example, in the game
SSX Tricky, a tricky move is also known as an über-trick. In the video game
Team Fortress 2, a playable class called the Medic has a healing gun that can deploy an "Ãœbercharge" on a teammate which renders both temporarily invulnerable. One of his domination phrases is "I am the
Ãœbermensch!". In
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 of PS1, the "Uber Score" is the most difficult score to achieve. In
Toy Soldiers, one of the bosses is a giant tank called the "Uber Tank". In
Dead Space 2, chapter 14-15 has an unkillable enemy known as the "Ubermorph". In Season 7 of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a deadlier and more powerful vampire is introduced, given the name "Ãœbervamp" by the show's protagonist.
American punk-band
Dead Kennedys in 1980 released the song
California Ãœber Alles, which plays on the theme of power and corruption through power.
Differences from the German
Spelling
The normal
transliteration of the "ü" ('
u' with an
umlaut) when used in writing systems without
diacritics (such as airport arrival boards, older computer systems, etc.) is "ue", not just "u". Because of different usage, the
English language version of the word is distinct from "über". It is not possible to translate every English "uber" back into "über": for example, the above-mentioned "uber-left" could not be translated into "Überlinke": a
Germanophone would say "linksaußen" ("outside left").
A natural language is
defined by common use of words, which dictionaries and academia record,
not the reverse. The use of "ü", "u", and "ue" in the word is an emerging trend in common usage in English with no clear consensus.
