mindmap
root((SUR))
surmount
To rise above; overcome.
🌱The story of how he surmounted poverty and crippling physical ailments to achieve what he achieved is almost unbelievable. 🌳Our verb mount, meaning "ascend, get up onto," comes from the same Latin root as mountain, and we keep those images in mind when using surmount, since climbing up or over a mountain is a symbol of achievement. The word almost always refers to human effort, and almost always in a positive way; thus, we speak of surmounting difficulties, surmounting problems, surmounting hurdles, surmounting handicaps—you get the idea. surcharge An additional tax or charge.
🌱Checking the bill, she discovered two surcharges that no one had warned her about. 🌳The Arab oil embargo of 1973 led airlines to add fuel surcharges to their passenger fares that were large enough to discourage air travel. Surcharges are usually added for special service. When you request a "rush job" from a service supplier, it will probably bring a surcharge along with it. A particularly difficult phone installation may carry a surcharge. An extra-large fine for a speeding offense after you've already had too many tickets could be called a surcharge. An added tax may be called a surcharge （or surtax） when it only affects people with incomes above a certain level. And if those low, low prices that show up in really big letters in ads for all kinds of services turn out to be misleading, it's probably because they don't include a bunch of surcharges that you won't find out about till later. surfeit A supply that is more than enough; excess.
🌱Whenever he glanced into his daughter's room, he was always astonished at the utter surfeit of things—dolls, dollhouses, stuffed animals, cushions, games, posters, and clothing strewn everywhere. 🌳Book and film critics often use surfeit when complaining about how an author or director has given us too much of something. In our consumer society, we're always noticing a surfeit of one thing or another, such as breakfast cereals in the supermarket. Statistics are always indicating a surfeit of lawyers or doctors or accountants in some parts of the country and a lack of them in others. The death of a young star always results in a surfeit of articles and books about him or her. And a potluck supper usually results in a surfeit of food, which might leave you surfeited, or stuffed. surreal Very strange or unusual; having the quality of a dream.
🌱In a surreal sequence, the main character gets a job on floor 7 1/2, which turns out to be only half as high as the other floors, so everyone must walk around stooped over. 🌳In 1924 a group of European poets, painters, and filmmakers founded a movement that they called Surrealism. Their central idea was that the unconscious mind （a concept Sigmund Freud had recently made famous） was the source of all imagination, and that art should try to express its contents. The unconscious, they believed, revealed itself most clearly in dreams. The Surrealist painters included René Magritte, Joan Miró, and Salvador Dalí, whose "limp watches" painting became the best-known Surrealist image of all. Since those years, we've used surreal to describe all kinds of situations that strike us as dreamlike. And even though the Surrealist movement ended long ago, surrealism now seems to be everywhere—not just in painting, literature, and movies but also in blogs, video games, and graphic novels.
🌱The story of how he surmounted poverty and crippling physical ailments to achieve what he achieved is almost unbelievable. 🌳Our verb mount, meaning "ascend, get up onto," comes from the same Latin root as mountain, and we keep those images in mind when using surmount, since climbing up or over a mountain is a symbol of achievement. The word almost always refers to human effort, and almost always in a positive way; thus, we speak of surmounting difficulties, surmounting problems, surmounting hurdles, surmounting handicaps—you get the idea. surcharge An additional tax or charge.
🌱Checking the bill, she discovered two surcharges that no one had warned her about. 🌳The Arab oil embargo of 1973 led airlines to add fuel surcharges to their passenger fares that were large enough to discourage air travel. Surcharges are usually added for special service. When you request a "rush job" from a service supplier, it will probably bring a surcharge along with it. A particularly difficult phone installation may carry a surcharge. An extra-large fine for a speeding offense after you've already had too many tickets could be called a surcharge. An added tax may be called a surcharge （or surtax） when it only affects people with incomes above a certain level. And if those low, low prices that show up in really big letters in ads for all kinds of services turn out to be misleading, it's probably because they don't include a bunch of surcharges that you won't find out about till later. surfeit A supply that is more than enough; excess.
🌱Whenever he glanced into his daughter's room, he was always astonished at the utter surfeit of things—dolls, dollhouses, stuffed animals, cushions, games, posters, and clothing strewn everywhere. 🌳Book and film critics often use surfeit when complaining about how an author or director has given us too much of something. In our consumer society, we're always noticing a surfeit of one thing or another, such as breakfast cereals in the supermarket. Statistics are always indicating a surfeit of lawyers or doctors or accountants in some parts of the country and a lack of them in others. The death of a young star always results in a surfeit of articles and books about him or her. And a potluck supper usually results in a surfeit of food, which might leave you surfeited, or stuffed. surreal Very strange or unusual; having the quality of a dream.
🌱In a surreal sequence, the main character gets a job on floor 7 1/2, which turns out to be only half as high as the other floors, so everyone must walk around stooped over. 🌳In 1924 a group of European poets, painters, and filmmakers founded a movement that they called Surrealism. Their central idea was that the unconscious mind （a concept Sigmund Freud had recently made famous） was the source of all imagination, and that art should try to express its contents. The unconscious, they believed, revealed itself most clearly in dreams. The Surrealist painters included René Magritte, Joan Miró, and Salvador Dalí, whose "limp watches" painting became the best-known Surrealist image of all. Since those years, we've used surreal to describe all kinds of situations that strike us as dreamlike. And even though the Surrealist movement ended long ago, surrealism now seems to be everywhere—not just in painting, literature, and movies but also in blogs, video games, and graphic novels.
SUR is actually a shortening of the Latin prefix super-, meaning "over, above" (See SUPER,) and has the same meaning. A surface is the face above or on the outside of something. A surplus is something above and beyond what is needed. And to survey a landscape is to look out over it.🌸