Other forms: surrendered, surrendering, surrenders
To surrender is to stop fighting and give yourself up to the other side. Surrender to the police, the town surrendered, refuse to surrender.
The noun names both the act and the terms: unconditional surrender, the instrument of surrender. It also means handing something over when required — surrender your passport, surrender a weapon — which is the legal use. And it means giving in to a feeling: surrender to sleep, surrender to temptation. Note that surrender is intransitive in the fighting sense but takes an object in the handing-over one, which is the difference between surrendering and surrendering something.
1verbsurrenderTo stop fighting and give yourself up.
“The garrison surrendered after eleven days.”
synonyms: give in, capitulate, yield
2verbhandTo hand something over when required.
“He had to surrender his passport at the desk.”
3nounactThe act of giving up.
“The surrender was signed on a ship in the bay.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
surrender is a giving up.
Old French surrendre is sur-, over, plus rendre, to give back — to give over. Render, rent and surrender are the same verb, and the military sense keeps the plainest reading: everything is given over.
Middle English
surrendren
English, today
surrender
Built from
From Middle English surrendren. From Middle English surrendren, from Old French surrendre, from sur- + rendre (“render”). Displaced native on hand gān.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA