surf

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   ride the waves of the sea with a surfboard

   Californians love to surf

2. 2
   noun

   Waves that break on an ocean shoreline.

   […] perhaps it was the look of the island, with its gray, melancholy woods, and wild stone spires, and the surf that we could both see and hear foaming and thundering on the steep beach […]

3. 3
   noun

   An instance or session of riding a surfboard in the surf.

   We went for a surf this morning.

4. 4
   noun

   A dance popular in the 1960s in which the movements of a surfboard rider are mimicked.

   She [...] loves to cook, sew and dance. She's up on all the latest steps like the frug, the hully-gully and the surf.

5. 5
   verb

   To bodysurf; to swim in the surf at a beach.

   Such diversion as Podson could extort from his isolation was soon vitiated by repetition. He surfed. He sun-baked - with discretion till his skin had peeled and given him a harder cuticle.

6. 6
   noun

   waves breaking on the shore

7. 7
   verb

   switch channels, on television

8. 8
   verb

   look around casually and randomly, without seeking anything in particular

Etymology

Probably from earlier suff, suffe (“the inrush of the sea towards the shore”), possibly from Middle English suffe. Compare sough, surf (“a gutter, drain, sewer, trench”) and sough (“a soothing, gentle, murmuring sound of wind or water”). Alternatively, possibly of Indo-Aryan origin, as the word was formerly a reference to the coast of India, though this is doubtful as no positive etymon can be identified. The verb is from 1917. The verb referring to "browsing the Internet" was popularized by Jean Armour Polly.