surface

«surface» in Mova's school dictionary: the outside or top layer of something: the surface of a… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a surface, surfaces); verb (surface, surfaces, surfaced, surfacing)

meaning for a pupil

1) The surface is the outside or top layer of something: the surface of a table, the Earth's surface. tree →

2) The surface of water is its top, where it meets the air. tree →

3) To surface is to come up to the top of water. tree →

4) To surface can mean to appear or become known. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science, the Earth's surface is land and water; most of it (about 71%) is covered by water. In maths, a surface is a face of a solid shape; «surface area» is the total area of all the faces, measured in square units. In hygiene, wipe kitchen surfaces to remove germs. Phrases: «on the surface» (at first sight), «scratch the surface» (only deal with a small part).

examples

• The surface of the lake was smooth like glass. tree →
• A whale surfaced to breathe. tree →
• Wipe the kitchen surfaces after cooking. tree →
• Most of the Earth's surface is water. tree →
• Find the surface area of the cube. tree →
• Leaves floated on the surface of the pond. tree →
• On the surface he looked calm, but he was nervous. tree →
• The diver swam back to the surface. tree →
• She stooped down to drink, when a horrible head bobbed up on the surface. tree →

note

Pronounced «SUR-fis». Countable. In maths problems, surface area of a cube = 6 × side × side; it is in square units (cm²), not cm. «Surface» (the outside) differs from «volume» (the space inside).

In the corpora

• Owl wing feathers have comb-like front edges, soft fringes and a velvety surface that muffle the sound of flying.
• The diving bell spider of European ponds lives underwater in a silk tent filled with air from the surface.
• The animals rise only at night because darkness hides them from hunters that find food by sight near the surface.
• A goldfish gulping at the surface is usually short of oxygen; a partial water change and a filter help.
• Whales poo near the surface and feed the ocean.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «surface» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.