Other forms: surfaces, surfaced, surfacing
A surface is the outside or top layer of something. A smooth surface, the surface of the water, scratch the surface.
It has area and no thickness, which is why surface area rises so much faster than volume as a thing is divided — the reason powders react fast and lungs are folded. Scratch the surface means to deal with only the beginning. As a verb, to surface means to come up or to emerge. Note that the French means above the face.
1nounsurfaceThe outside or top layer of something.
“Leaves floated on the surface of the pond.”
2verbemergeTo come up or emerge.
“The whale surfaced right next to our boat.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
surface is an outer layer.
French surface is sur, above, plus face. Superficies is the same idea in Latin.
Middle French
surface
English, today
surface
Borrowed from Middle French surface. Middle French surface. by surface analysis, sur- + face. a doublet of superficies.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA