surpass
verb
Simple meaning
To go beyond or exceed in an adjudicative or literal sense.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
serpasSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
sɚˈpæs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
transitive
To go beyond or exceed (something) in an adjudicative or literal sense.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To go beyond or exceed (something) in an adjudicative or literal sense.
Used this way, surpass is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- outgo , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use surpass
- “Her performance surpasses that of any other student I know.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.