surprisal
/sə(ɹ)ˈpɹaɪzəl/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.02 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A sudden coming-upon someone or something unexpectedly or unawares.
Countable; Obsolete; Uncountable
noun
The feeling caused by being surprised; surprise, shock, amazement.
Countable; Obsolete; Uncountable
noun
An information measure as equal in bits (binary digits) to the base-2 log of 1 over the probability, with the result that the number of choices equals 2ⁿ where n is the number of bits.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Their chiefe attempts are by Stratagems, trecheries, or surprisals."
- "How to secure the lady from surprisal"
- "Because death is uncertain, let us prevent its surprisal."
- "Because language is produced and processed over time, we get it bit by bit. This allows a measure of the goodness of an incoming word according to how expected it was, given the preceding context: its expectedness or surprisal. Surprisal and expectedness are inverses: When an incoming word is highly expected, its surprisal is close to zero."
Etymology
Etymology tree English surprise Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālisbor. Old French -albor. ▲ Latin -ālis Old French -elbor. ▲ Latin -ālisbor. Middle English -al English -al English surprisal From surprise + -al. (information measure): Defined by Myron Tribus in the 1961 book Thermostatics and Thermodynamics.