  Although the Latin term ‘transcendens’ (i.e. ‘that what surpasses [something]’, pl. ‘transcendentia’) has older roots, indicating the nobility of being which is free from matter, its interpretation as ‘transcategorical’ appears first in logical treatises of the 12th century. In the 15th–16th century, the term ‘transcendentalis’ (pl. ‘transcendentalia’) was framed as a synonym of ‘transcendens’ in the ‘transgeneric’ sense, probably to distinguish it from the earlier sense. If the word ‘transcendental’ was introduced in the 15th–16th century, therefore, to extricate the meaning of the word ‘transcendent’ from the confusion with a different and older meaning of the word indicating the nobility of being, then the use of the term ‘transcendental’ by modern scholars to indicate a metaphysical doctrine formulated in the 13th century entails an anachronism, innocent perhaps, but manifest.