- supremacy
- supremacy, ascendancy denote the position of being first (as in rank, power, or influence).Supremacy implies superiority over all others (as in utility, in quality, in efficiency, in desirability, or in prestige){
in the Sahara, the automobile has begun to challenge the supremacy of the camel— Huxley
}{the British concept of the supremacy of the home . . . was so deep and so great that not even the Crown could enter the home— Wayne Morse
}{last summer American atomic supremacy gave place to something like atomic equality between "the two great colossi"— New Statesman
}Ascendancy may or may not imply supremacy, but it always involves the idea of domination or of autocratic power{an idea has ascendancy over his imagination when it has the latter completely under its sway
}{the whole system of oppression and cruelty by which dominant castes seek to retain their ascendancy— Russell
}{a speaker can get an ascendancy over the House, if he has a strong personality and the ability to regain the thread of his speech— Woodrow Wyatt
}{the rays of the gas lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy— Poe
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.