Other forms: surfing, surfed
Surf is the line of white water where waves break near the shore. Heavy surf, the sound of the surf, surf on the beach.
It is the noise and the foam together, and surf report and surf forecast are the standard terms for how good the waves will be. To surf is to ride those waves on a board, and surfing is the sport. Note the extended sense of surfing the internet, coined in the 1990s and now slightly dated; channel surfing, meaning flicking through television channels; and surfer, wetsuit and longboard.
1nounsurfThe line of white water where waves break.
“You could hear the surf from about half a mile inland.”
2verbrideTo ride breaking waves on a board.
“He has surfed that beach since he was about eleven.”
surf is breaking waves.
The word appears in the seventeenth century in accounts of the Indian coast, possibly a variant of an older word suffe. Its origin is genuinely unknown, which is odd for something so ordinary.
Middle English
suffe
English, today
surf
Built from
Probably from earlier suff, suffe (“the inrush of the sea towards the shore”), possibly from Middle English suffe. Compare sough, surf (“a gutter, drain, sewer, trench”) and sough (“a soothing, gentle, murmuring sound of wind or water”). Alternatively, possibly of inc origin, as the word was formerly a reference to the coast of India, though this is doubtful as no positive etymon can be identified. The verb is from 1917. The verb referring to "browsing the Internet" was popularized by Jean Armour Polly.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA