Etymology Explorer › English

Where does “surface” come from?

Surface comes from French surface, derived from the French prefix sur- and Latin facies meaning "face," ultimately tracing to the Proto-Indo-European root dʰeh₁- meaning "to place or put."

surface (English): The overside or up-side of a flat object such as...

Definitions

  1. The overside or up-side of a flat object such as...

Ancestry of “surface”, step by step

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1Middle Frenchsurface—

Words derived from “surface”

  • subsurface
  • surfacing
  • resurface
  • undersurface
  • hypersurface
  • isosurface
  • surfacer
  • multisurface
  • worksurface
  • intersurface
  • microsurface
  • paleosurface
  • countersurface
  • resurfacer
  • surfaceward
  • antisurface
  • nonsurface
  • nanosurface
  • surfaceman
  • surform
  • surfacewards
  • surfaceless
  • surfacy
  • pseudosurface
Every word from Middle French surface →