Surroundings

How to spell surroundings

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce surroundings

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does surroundings mean?

1. nounThe conditions, area, and things that are around a person or place.

Surroundings in a sentence

• The cabin sat in peaceful surroundings near the lake.

• New employees take a week to get used to their surroundings.

Where does surroundings come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back through the verb 'surround', which entered English in the 1400s from the Old French 'soronder', meaning 'to overflow' or 'to flood over'. That French verb came from the Late Latin 'superundare', built from 'super' meaning 'over' and 'unda' meaning 'a wave', so the literal early sense was water rising over its banks. Over time the meaning drifted from flooding to encircling, helped by the look and sound of the unrelated word 'round', which reshaped the spelling and pushed the sense toward 'to enclose on all sides'. By the 1600s 'surround' meant to encircle, and the noun 'surroundings', for the things and conditions around a person or place, became common in the 1800s. The hidden trap is the double 'r' from 'sur-' meeting the 'r' of the root, plus the silent rounding-out of the 'ound' that owes nothing to the original Latin 'wave'.

How the word is built

• sur- (over, from Latin super)
• round
• -ing (noun-forming suffix)
• -s (plural)