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)

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in the Sahara, the automobile has begun to challenge the supremacy of the camel— Huxley

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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

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last summer American atomic supremacy gave place to something like atomic equality between "the two great colossi"— New Statesman

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Ascendancy may or may not imply supremacy, but it always involves the idea of domination or of autocratic power

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an idea has ascendancy over his imagination when it has the latter completely under its sway

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the whole system of oppression and cruelty by which dominant castes seek to retain their ascendancy— Russell

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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

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the rays of the gas lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy— Poe

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Analogous words: preeminence, transcendence, superlativeness, peer- lessness, incomparability (see corresponding adjectives at SUPREME): *power, authority, dominion, control, sway