surprise, surprise
surprise
verb[ T ]
uk /səˈpraɪz/ us /sɚˈpraɪz/
B1
to make someone feel surprise: 使诧异，使惊奇，使感到意外
The news surprised everyone.这条消息让所有的人都感到意外。
[ + that ]It doesn't surprise me that their parents don't want them to get married.他们的父母不想让他们俩结婚，我并不感到意外。
[ + to infinitive ]It will not surprise anyone to learn that the offer has been rejected.这项提议遭到否决，谁也不会感到意外。
[ + question word ]Janet was surprised how quickly the time passed.珍妮特惊讶地发现时间竟然过得如此之快。
to find, catch, or attack someone when they are not expecting it: 意外发现；当场抓获；突然袭击
The robbers had just opened the safe when they were surprised by the police.抢匪们刚打开保险箱就被警察当场抓获了。
[ + -ing verb ]His mother surprised him helping himself to her gin.他偷喝母亲的杜松子酒时被母亲逮了个正着。
It won't surprise you to learn that she has left the company.
They surprised their father by cleaning the house from top to bottom.
Their generosity surprised me.
It often surprises people that we don't charge money for our service.
I wanted to surprise my parents, so I turned up with my hair dyed black.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Surprising and shocking
against all expectationsphrase
amaze
amazing
amazingly
astonish
dumbfounding
dumbfoundingly
dynamite
earth-shaking
earth-shattering
one for the booksidiom
pull
pull something out of the bag/hatidiom
raise (a few) eyebrowsidiom
reality check
turn-up for the book(s)idiom
unbelievable
walk
walk in on someone
world-shattering

surprise | American Dictionary

surprise
noun[ C/U ]
us/sərˈprɑɪz, sə-/
an unexpected event, or the feeling caused when something unexpected happens:
[ C ]Don’t tell Ann we’re having a party for her – I want it to be a surprise.
[ C ]Last night’s heavy snow came as a complete surprise.
[ U ]To my great surprise, they gave us everything we asked for.

surprise

adjective[ not gradable ]us/sərˈprɑɪz, sə-/
The basketball player paid a surprise visit to the campus on Thursday.
surprise
verb[ T ]
us/sərˈprɑɪz, sə-/
(of an event you did not expect) to cause you to feel excitement over a sudden discovery:
She surprised a lot of tennis fans by winning the Canadian Open.
If you say that you are not surprised or would not be surprised if something happened, you mean that you almost expect it:
I’m not surprised that their parents don’t want them to get married.
I would not be surprised to see the economy slow down next year.
To surprise someone is also to find the person unexpectedly:
She jumped out and surprised her sister, who ran out into the hall.

Examples of surprise

surprise
The proxy for energy-price surprises is then formed by subtracting these forecasts from the actual change in the energy price.
The first attack surprises most listeners, and it is reiterated three times.
The whole subsequent religious life is linked in this way to that moment and that state in which this feeling surprised the soul.
They were surprised at their level of success, particularly over the caretakers, and managed to win a week's holiday with pay for the board's carpenters.
How our symbolic capacities could be regarded as "trivial" surprised me.
The change of form into dance stimulated and surprised the audience and kept them more engaged in the ideas of the production.
What is surprising given the subtlety of the judgements in (36) is the consistency with which they are reported.
Without you having to defend your critics, have there been criticisms of it that surprised you?
We are surprised even when we have, when we believe we have, complete mastery.
We should not, then, be surprised to find the combination of masterly evocative rhetoric and poetic co-ordination in his prose writings in general.
However, it was surprising just how strong were the interactions between students' prior styles of reasoning and the outcomes of dierent methods of teaching.
Every student will have to read it, and most will be surprised to find that they enjoy the task.
If they were, then it should not be surprising that they did not rebel.
However, raising the minimum guarantee of the government resulted in no surprises.
Even heroes who are raised within an existing religious tradition and know its teachings well are still surprised by their deities.
See all examples of surprise
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations withsurprise

surprise

These are words often used in combination with surprise.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

big surprise
It was a bigsurprise to suddenly hear the tambourine.
complete surprise
In fact, most evinced completesurprise that their speech was of interest in the study.
element of surprise
In both of these latter cases, the elementofsurprise is removed and no time limit is put on the state of fury.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
See all collocations with surprise