Surcharge

How to spell surcharge

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce surcharge

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does surcharge mean?

1. nounAn additional charge or fee added on top of an existing cost.
2. verbTo impose an additional charge on someone or something.

Surcharge in a sentence

• noun

  The airline added a fuel surcharge to every ticket.

• verb

  The company will surcharge customers who pay after the due date.

• noun

  Paying the bill by credit card incurs a small surcharge.

• verb

  Some hotels surcharge guests for using the room safe.

Where does surcharge come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from Old French surcharger, meaning 'to overload' or 'to load too heavily', formed from the prefix sur-, which means 'over' or 'above' and traces back to the Latin super 'over', combined with charger 'to load'. That verb charger itself derives from the Late Latin carricare 'to load a wagon', built on carrus, the word for a wheeled cart that also gives us 'car' and 'carriage'. English took the word in during the 1400s, at first meaning to overload or burden something physically, and the sense of an extra fee or additional charge added on top of the usual cost developed later. The spelling trap lives in that opening sur-, which sounds the same as the more familiar 'sir' but is built from the 'over' prefix; remembering that it means a charge laid over the top fixes the first syllable.

How the word is built

• sur- (over, above)
• charge (to load, to impose a cost)