Adjective: surreal
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more surreal |
| Superlative | most surreal |
Sample Sentences
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surreal picture/sound/art
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a surreal experience
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The movie had a dreamlike, surreal atmosphere.
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Three weeks after the second Time meltdown cover, one day after Leonard Cohen died, Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest upsets in American political history. That’s when 2016 went from being a bad dream to full-on waking nightmare, one that’s just gotten worse and worse, and more and more surreal. [2016 December 19, Dave Bry, “'Surreal' is Merriam-Webster's word of the year. Sounds about right”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:]
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Incomprehensible violence and the tragedy that follows, the implication goes, inject a surreal dimension into existence. The conspiracy theories and social upheavals spawned by our own world’s mass departures—and, Lindelof has noted, electoral surprises—suggest that the strangeness of The Leftovers is mostly one of degree, not kind. [2017 June 16, Spencer Kornhaber, “The Dizzying, Surreal Journey of ‘The Leftovers’”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN:]
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As people gushed over and grappled with the model’s capabilities, to a degree that exceeded many employees’ expectations, the web app [DALL·E 2] went viral across social media, producing a plethora of wild, wacky, and surreal AI-generated art in its wake. [2025, Karen Hao, Empire of AI, New York City: Penguin Press, →ISBN:]
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Mr. Trump’s surreal endeavor to conquer Greenland is of a piece with his general hostility to Europe. [2026 January 9, James Kirchick, “Greenland Is Only the Beginning. Trump Has His Sights Set on Europe.”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:]
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Other moments of grace played out during an otherwise surreal evening. [2026 April 26, Linda Feldmann, “After the gunfire: Moments of grace at White House correspondents’ dinner”, in The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Massachusetts: Christian Science Publishing Society, →ISSN, →OCLC:]
Adjectives inflected like surreal
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *úp
3. Proto-Indo-European *-er
4. Proto-Indo-European *upér
5. Proto-Italic *super
6. Latin super
7. Latin super-
8. Old French sur-
9. French sur-
10. Proto-Indo-European *(H)reh₁-der.
11. Proto-Indo-European *(H)reh₁ís
12. Proto-Italic *reis
13. Classical Latin rēs
14. Proto-Indo-European *h₂el-
15. Proto-Indo-European *-is
16. Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.?
17. Proto-Italic *-ālis
18. Latin -ālis
19. Late Latin reālisder.
20. Old French reel
21. Middle French real
22. French réel
23. Proto-Indo-European *-id-
24. Proto-Indo-European *-yéti
25. Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti
26. Proto-Hellenic *-íďďō
27. Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō)
28. Proto-Indo-European *-mos
29. Proto-Indo-European *-mós
30. Ancient Greek -μός (-mós)
31. Ancient Greek -ῐσμός (-ĭsmós)bor.
32. Latin -ismusbor.
33. French -isme
34. French réalisme
35. French surréalismebor.
36. English surrealismbf.
37. English surreal
38. A back-formation from surrealism, equivalent to sur- + real.
Verbs referencing "surreal"
Dutch Adjectives
surreëel.