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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

surf.

Waves that break on an ocean shoreline.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/sɜːf/Australia, Received-Pronunciation/sɝf/General-American/sʌɹf/Scotland/søːf/New-Zealand, Wales

  1. Waves that break on an ocean shoreline.

    countable · uncountable

  2. An instance or session of riding a surfboard in the surf.

    countable · uncountable
    We went for a surf this morning.

  3. A dance popular in the 1960s in which the movements of a surfboard rider are mimicked.

    countable · uncountable

  4. The bottom of a drain.

    UK · countable · dialectal · uncountable
Where this word comes 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 Indo-Aryan 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.

verb/sɜːf/Australia, Received-Pronunciation/sɝf/General-American/sʌɹf/Scotland/søːf/New-Zealand, Wales

  1. To ride a wave on a surfboard; to pursue or take part in the sport of surfing.

  2. To surf at a specified place.

  3. To bodysurf; to swim in the surf at a beach.

  4. To browse the Internet, television, etc.

    ambitransitive
Where this word comes 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 Indo-Aryan 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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.