a. [SUB- 14, 19.]
1. Not quite human, less than human; occas. almost or all but human.
1793. J. Williams, Calm Exam., 88. Perhaps the slumbers of Lord Thurlow are never broken by the … interposition of thought; if they are not, the man is extra or sub-human.
1894. Pop. Sci. Monthly, XLIV. 514. The mental operations of my subhuman dog.
1901. F. W. Maitland, in Eng. Hist. Rev., July, 425. To imagine not only a king who is almost super-human in his self-will, but also a clergy and a nation which are sub-human in their self-abasement.
2. Belonging to or characteristic of the part of creation that is below the human race.
1837. Beddoes, Lett., in Poems (1851), p. ci. What my thoughts … may be regarding things human, sub-human, and super-human.
1877. Swinburne, Note C. Brontë, 90. The typical specimen which then emitted in one spasm of sub-human spite at once the snarl and the stench proper to its place and kind.
1894. H. Drummond, Ascent of Man, 28. He turns his back upon Nature—sub-human Nature, that is.
