surprise [LME] From the 15th century a surprise was a sudden unexpected attack or seizure of a place. You could also use the word to talk about simply taking a place by force, whether unexpected or not, as in ‘the surprise of Troy’, even after a siege of ten years. You could also be surprised by emotions. Over time the suggestion of force faded away and the sense of something being unexpected came to the fore. The source was medieval Latin superprehendere ‘to seize’, from prehendere source of words listed at *prison.