supérieur

Supérieur is a French adjective meaning higher or upper, and it can also function as a noun. It derives from Latin superior, and in gendered form the masculine is supérieur and the feminine is supérieure. The word is used across several domains with distinct but related senses.

In everyday usage, supérieur conveys spatial or positional ideas. It designates something located higher or above another item, such as un étage supérieur (an upper floor) or le côté supérieur d’un objet (the upper side). It also expresses qualitative or quantitative superiority, as in produit supérieur (a higher-quality product) or niveau supérieur (a higher level).

As a noun, supérieur can refer to a person in authority within an organization or community. In workplaces, it means a superior or boss. In religious contexts, the term is common for the head of a congregation or order, with the feminine form supérieure used for women. The phrase les supérieurs désignera les responsables masculins, tandis que les supérieures désignent les responsables féminins.

In mathematics and logic, supérieur appears in relation to order and bounds. A borne supérieure is an upper bound of a set, and in order theory one may refer to an élément supérieur (an element greater than another). The related concept supremum is the least upper bound, usually expressed in French as le supremum or la borne supérieure d’un ensemble.

Overall, supérieur retains a core sense of “going up” or “ranked higher,” while its precise meaning shifts with context to cover grammar, authority, geometry, and formal mathematics.