Über, a German word meaning above, has migrated to English and is often used as a prefix to describe something superior. It is commonly used in TV, film, gaming and text messages. The term has been used in Germany for a long time, with Nietzsche discussing the advent of superior men. The word is increasing in popularity in English.
Über is a German word meaning above or above. In the 2000s it migrated to the English language and is often written uber, rather than with the umlaut over the “u”. It is often used as a prefix in English to describe something above and beyond the unusual, and is quite commonly used among teenagers and young adults.
The most common uses of über in English are in television, film, and in the gaming world. The word über pops up frequently in text messages and internet chats, replacing words like hyper, rad, and awesome as ways to describe the superior or exceptional quality of something being described. It doesn’t always have positive connotations. For example, in the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the goals was to defeat the übervamps, extremely hardy prehistoric vampires that populated Hellmouth.
A fantastic gamer can be called überkid or über gamer. In some cases, players reach higher levels in a video game or can become a higher character. Some cheat codes allow a character to become invincible, allowing, such as in Star Wars Jedi Knight, the opportunity for a character to become an über Jedi.
While we might be used to thinking of über as far as modern slang is concerned, the term über in Germany has long been used in much the same way. Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, predicted the advent of a race of übermensch, or superior men who would surpass mere human status and reject society’s rules and be able to use their minds to overcome being weakest human. Many have regarded the Nazis as the übermensch; yet reading Nietzsche reveals that this was clearly not his intent. He was speaking in philosophical terms and not discussing a superior military force and the destruction of the Jewish people.
You could call the term über simply the latest in a series of terms that have either been borrowed or stolen entirely from the Germanic languages. Much of English comes from Germanic origin, and in fact über sounds not very different from our word super to which it is extremely similar. The word migrates easily into English, where modern usage shows it is increasing in popularity. One day only those with training in the German language may recognize the word as anything other than English.
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