Noun

The status of being preeminent, dominant or ascendant.

High importance; superiority.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2012-01

, author=Philip E. Mirowski , title=Harms to Health from the Pursuit of Profits , volume=100, issue=1, page=87 , magazine= citation , passage=In an era when political leaders promise deliverance from decline through America’s purported preeminence in scientific research, the news that science is in deep trouble in the United States has been as unwelcome as a diagnosis of leukemia following the loss of health insurance.}}

Noun

(en noun)

someone of high rank, reputation or social station

the quality or state of being eminent

prominence in a particular order or accumulation; esteem

(geology) an elevated land area or a hill

* 1817 , (Walter Scott), Rob Roy :

From the summit of an eminence I had already had a distant view of Osbaldistone Hall, a large and antiquated edifice, peeping out from a Druidical grove of huge oaks [...].

(anatomy) a protuberance