Surfaced

How to spell surfaced

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce surfaced

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does surfaced mean?

1. verbCame up to the top of water, or came into view or became known.
2. verbProvided with a hard top layer, as on a road or path.

Surfaced in a sentence

• New evidence surfaced during the second week of the trial.

• The council surfaced the lane with fresh asphalt last summer.

• The diver finally surfaced after nearly two minutes underwater.

• Workers surfaced the car park before the shop reopened.

Where does surfaced come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of the verb 'surface', which itself was built from the noun 'surface', borrowed into English from French in the 1600s. The French word combined 'sur', meaning 'above' or 'over', with 'face', the outer form or appearance of something, so the literal idea was 'the upper face' of an object. 'Face' traces back to the Latin 'facies', meaning 'form, shape, or appearance', the same root that gives us 'facade' and 'facial'. By the early 1800s 'surface' had become a verb meaning to rise to the top, and from there it grew the figurative sense of facts or feelings coming into view. The spelling keeps the soft -ce of the noun before the -ed ending, which is the small point writers occasionally trip over.

How the word is built

• sur- (above, over)
• face (from Latin facies: form, appearance)
• -ed (past tense suffix)