surface

Etymology

From French surface. Doublet of superficies.

noun

1. The overside or up-side of a flat object such as a table, or of a liquid.
   A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away,[…]. 1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess
2. The outside hull of a tangible object.
   Of all the transitions brought about on the Earth’s surface by temperature change, the melting of ice into water is the starkest. It is binary. And for the land beneath, the air above and the life around, it changes everything. 2013-05-11, “The climate of Tibet: Pole-land”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8835, page 80
   [The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. 2013-07-20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845
3. (figurative) Outward or external appearance.
   On the surface, the spy looked like a typical businessman.
   Such characters as have nothing but external accompliſhments to recommend them, may indeed be greatly admired and approved by vain and weak underſtandings, which penetrate no deeper than the ſurface; but they are deſpiſed by all the truly ſenſible, and pitied by all the truly good. 1782, Vicesimus Knox, “On knowing the world at an early age”, in Liberal education: […], 4th edition, London: Charles Dilly […], pages 393–394
4. (mathematics, geometry) The locus of an equation (especially one with exactly two degrees of freedom) in a more-than-two-dimensional space.

verb

1. (transitive) To provide something with a surface.
2. (transitive) To apply a surface to something.
   The crew surfaced the road with bitumen.
3. (intransitive) To rise to the surface.
   There was great relief when the missing diver finally surfaced.
4. (transitive) To bring to the surface.
   Sage went immediately to work; Damien surfaced the submarine and readied the group to meet outside the hatch. 2007, Patrick Valentine, The Sage of Aquarius, page 182
5. (intransitive, figurative) To come out of hiding.
6. (intransitive, of information or facts) To become known or apparent; to appear or be found.
   Subordinate clauses, by contrast, exhibit V1 or V2 only around 35% of the time, with the verb usually surfacing later. 2013, George Walkden, “The status of hwæt in Old English”, in English Language and Linguistics, volume 17, number 3, →DOI
7. (transitive) To make (information or facts) known.
8. (intransitive) To work a mine near the surface.