Myers appears to have coined his super-word, the supernormal, around 1885. He was trying to get away from the dualistic or theistic connotations of another earlier super-word, the supernatural, with its centuries-long insistence (it was coined in the thirteenth century) that extraordinary events must possess an agent outside the natural order to be considered genuine miracles. Put simply, they must be from God—“God,” of course, defined by the teachings and authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
