Surprisals

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An unexpected event that causes astonishment or wonder occurs
2. the act of surprising someone lead to a revelation or sudden realization
3. a sudden and often unwelcome effect that captures attention and creates shock

Etymology: "Surprisals" is the plural of "surprisal," a term that sounds like a dressed-up synonym for surprise but was coined for a precise technical purpose. In 1961, the American engineer Myron Tribus used it in his book "Thermostatics and Thermodynamics" to name a measure of information, the amount of unexpectedness carried by an event. The idea is that a rare, unlikely outcome carries more information than a predictable one, so it is more "surprising" in a quantifiable sense. The word itself is built in the most ordinary way. It takes "surprise," borrowed into English from Old French "surprise" (meaning something taken unawares), and adds the suffix "-al," which English has long used to form nouns from verbs, as in "arrival" or "refusal." The result is a noun for the quantity that the verb "surprise" describes, rather than a new idea in itself.

Synonyms: unexpected events, shocks, discoveries