a. [SUPER- 9 a.] Extremely or excessively subtle; over-subtle.
1599. Sandys, Europæ Spec. (1632), 104. Admiring them in the rest of their super-subtill inventions.
1604. Shaks., Oth., I. iii. 363. A fraile vow, betwixt an erring Barbarian, and a super-subtle Venetian.
1614. Purchas, Pilgrimage, II. xii. (ed. 2), 175. The Cabalist as a super subtile transcendent, mounteth … from this sensible world vnto that other intellectuall.
1823. Lamb, Elia, Ser. II. Child Angel. By reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to breathe the air of that super-subtile region.
1824. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. I. (1863), 106–7. Over-informed, super-subtle, too clever for her age.
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), II. 75. The super-subtile fancies of theosophy.
1879. McCarthy, Own Times, II. xxiv. 211. The principal defect of his [Gladstone’s] mind was probably a lack of simplicity, a tendency to over-refining and super-subtle argument.
So Supersubtilize v. trans., to make oversubtle; Supersubtlety, excessive subtlety.
1858. Masson, Milton, I. vi. 443. In him [sc. Donne] there were gathered up … all the tips and clippings of super-subtlety among the Elizabethans.
1870. Lowell, Study Wind., 245. The filigree of wire-drawn sentiment and supersubtilized conceit.
