Surrounded

How to spell surrounded

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce surrounded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does surrounded mean?

1. verbPast tense and participle of surround: to have encircled something or been encircled on all sides.

Surrounded in a sentence

• The old farmhouse was surrounded by tall hedges on every side.

• Police surrounded the building within minutes of the alarm.

Where does surrounded come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word reaches back to the Latin verb superundare, meaning 'to overflow', built from super 'over, above' and undare 'to flow or rise in waves', itself from unda 'a wave'. It passed into Old French as suronder, still carrying the watery sense of flooding or overflowing onto land. When English borrowed it in the fifteenth century, the meaning gradually shifted from water spreading over an area to anything encircling or hemming in a place or person. The spelling is a famous trap because the original had nothing to do with 'round': the second syllable was reshaped by association with the familiar English word 'round', which fit the new sense of encircling perfectly. That is exactly why writers must remember the double r at 'surr', a legacy of the Latin super- prefix, even though the ending now looks reassuringly like 'round'.

How the word is built

• sur- (over, from Latin super 'above')
• round (the modern shape influenced by English 'round')
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)