Transcendent - transcendental

Although the brothers Fowler listed this as a common malaprop in their second group (a confusion of two words which they felt to be distinct, while recognising that other writers might not do so), the distinction seems worth trying to preserve. The meanings of both, however, as listed in OED have often been used for each other. The main lesson from this for learners hoping to write accurate academic English is to handle both words with great care, and only use either of them if you are sure that you are using them clearly - and to to the satisfaction of your reader, who may, after all, be a pedant. Both words are adjectives, and share the same origin (from the Latin scendere 'to climb' and trans 'beyond'). To pedants, their uses are different; and any good writer might be aware that the connotationss are apart.

• Transcendent is the simpler. It means 'going beyond, surpassing or excellent'. (Fowler said that the adverb transcendently meant "in a superlative degree".)
• Transcendental is more properly used as a term in philosophy and related disciplines. (It has been applied particularly (as the noun transcendentalism) to the philosophy of Emerson.) It means 'that which is above our normal experience', and 'transcendental philosophy' deals with such ideas as the nature of God and the miraculous. 'Transcendental meditation' was a yoga technique popularised in the 1970s in the west by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
• Our advice to student writers is
  • never to use transcendental simply to mean 'very good' (that should always be transcendent);
  • and, although some writers do use transcendent to mean 'beyond normal experience', avoid this. In current English, it is probably always better to say metaphysical.