If you mention a “surprise” without a lot of other context, most people take it with a generally positive implication. They might think of a gift, a party, or something else that appears unexpectedly. But the main point is that nowadays a surprise is often a good thing. Surprisingly enough, this was not always the case.
The word “surprise” came into use in the late 1400s, and at first it definitely wasn’t something you’d want to happen to you. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a “surprise” was a military attack, particularly when it resulted in capturing something or someone. A man with the interesting name “Fynes Moryson” used the word in that sense in his 1617 travel book An Itinerary: “Carefull watches against sallies or surprises of the Enemy.”
“Surprise” has been both a noun and a verb since nearly its first introduction, when people realized to their surprise that “we surprised them” was a handy thing to say in explaining how you came into possession of that mint-condition late-model castle. But the implication of “surprising” or “being surprised” was also negative in those days, as suggested by what William Caxton wrote in 1490: “He shall be soo surprysed wyth angre and furyouse woodnes.”
There were a couple of related words used long ago that have since disappeared. In a 1611 history of Great Britain, John Speed wrote about “The surprizall of these three Cities, Glocester, Bathe, and Cirencester.” “Surprisal” was the state of being surprised. And another history book, this one written in 1637, refers to “surprisable:” “Upon intelligence that the Castle of Carlile..was surprisable.” Being surprisable meant vulnerable to capture.
Now, it’s no surprise that “surprise” was occasionally used in what was, in those days, a surprising way, having nothing to do with a military operation. And you probably won’t be surprised to find out that Shakespeare was one of the first to use the word that way, in his little-known play Pericles in 1609: “Our lodgings..Shooke as the earth did quake…Pure surprize and feare, made me to quite the house.” Here “surprise” is a personal feeling, although still one that you probably wouldn’t welcome.
By the mid-to-late 1700s, “surprise” began to be mentioned in a more positive way, like this bit from William Shenstone in 1767: “Surprise quickens enjoyment, and expectation banishes surprise.” After that, citations of surprise as a positive thing become much easier to locate, with G.K.Chesterton opining in 1908 that “…the chief pleasure is surprise.”
And that brings us more or less up to date. But just remember, if you’re pleasantly surprised by a gift or event around the holidays, it wasn’t all that long ago that Christmas Eve was probably excellent timing for capturing a mint-condition, late-model, surprisable castle.
