Surface

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Borrowed from Middle French surface. By surface analysis, sur- + face. Doublet of superficies.

The external boundary of an object or body.
The overside or upside of a flat object such as a table, or of a liquid. A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away,[…].
The outside hull of a tangible object. Of all the transitions brought about on the Earth’s surface by temperature change, the melting of ice into water is the starkest. It is binary. And for the land beneath, the air above and the life around, it changes everything.
figuratively Outward or external appearance. On the surface, the spy looked like a typical businessman.
The locus of an equation (especially one with exactly two degrees of freedom) in a space of more than two dimensions.
The story or image suggested by a cryptic clue, when read as a whole sentence without considering wordplay. The surface is clearly about people like you and me, those whose better days are behind us and who now shop at M&S.
A portion of the display to which graphics can be rendered. The video player algorithm requires a target surface.

transitive To provide with a surface; to apply a surface to. The crew surfaced the road with bitumen.
intransitive To rise to the surface. There was great relief when the missing diver finally surfaced.
transitive To bring to the surface. Sage went immediately to work; Damien surfaced the submarine and readied the group to meet outside the hatch.
figuratively, intransitive To come out of hiding. The company believes the stolen chocolate bars could surface through unofficial sales channels across European markets.
intransitive To become known or apparent; to appear or be found; to come to light. Subordinate clauses, by contrast, exhibit V1 or V2 only around 35% of the time, with the verb usually surfacing later.
transitive To make (information, facts, content, etc) known. They're not growing. Why would I surface them to new people? [...That] makes our video surface less, and that makes the next video surface less.
intransitive To work a mine near the surface.