a. [f. L. transgress-, ppl. stem (see TRANSGRESS) + -IVE. Cf. late L. transgressīvus.]
1. Having the character or quality of transgressing. a. Involving transgression; sinful.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., I. x. 37. Adam … from the transgressive infirmities of himselfe might have erred alone, as well as the Angels before him.
1797. Hist., in Ann. Reg., 57/1. The powers assumed … were explicitly termed unconstitutional, and transgressive of the authority lodged in them by the laws.
b. Passing beyond some limit.
1735. H. Brooke, Univ. Beauty, III. 30. Where the Solar Heat, and searching Air Transgressive, pierce our actuated Sphere.
† 2. Music. ? Not coming in regular sequence; or ? Overlapping (cf. CONJUNCT B. 6). Obs.
1760. Stiles, Anc. Gk. Mus., in Phil. Trans., LI. 704. Systems were there considered as differing in respect, first, to magnitude; secondly, to genus; thirdly, to the being consonant or dissonant; fourthly, to the being rational or irrational; fifthly, to the being sequent or transgressive.
3. Geol. Overlapping: cf. TRANSGRESSION 2. (So Fr. transgressif (Littré).)
1854. [implied in TRANSGRESSIVELY].
1860. Mayne, Expos. Lex., Transgressivus,… applied to a couch or bed that becomes deposited on others of different natures and different levels by rising over them, so that it is necessarily more or less inclined: transgressive.
Hence Transgressively adv., in a transgressive manner; spec. in Geol. † (a) unconformably; (b) so as to overlap the formation next below it.
1847. Webster, Transgressively,… by transgressing.
1854. Murchison, Siluria, viii. 169. The Silurian series overlap transgressively or unconformably the edges of the subjacent sandstone.
1879. Gelkie, in Encycl. Brit., X. 371/2. Upraised Lower Silurian rocks, upon the upturned and denuded edges of which the Carboniferous Limestone lies transgressively.
