surplice

Syllables: sur·plice/ˈsɜːplɪs/US/ˈsɝplɪs/

surplice noun: a liturgical vestment of the Christian Church in the form of a tunic of white linen or cotton material, with wide or moderately wide sleeves, reaching to the hips or knees, usually featuring lace decoration and embroidered bordures.

Image: Fennec, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

surplice (plural surplices)

A liturgical vestment of the Christian Church in the form of a tunic of white linen or cotton material, with wide or moderately wide sleeves, reaching to the hips or knees, usually featuring lace decoration and embroidered bordures.
- On the previous night he had taken the manuscript out of a long neglected chest, containing old shooting jackets, old Oxbridge scribbling books, his old surplice, and battered cap and gown, and other memorials of youth, school, and home.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter III, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume II, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC
- Beneath an old ebony table were two long carved oak chests. I lifted the lid of one, and at the top was a once-white surplice covered with dust, and beneath was a mass of tracts — Commonwealth Quartos, unbound — a prey to worms and decay.1880, William Blades, The Enemies of Books, page 40

surplice meaning in Tamil, Tagalog, Arabic and Indonesian

surplice in Tamil

தியக்கோனாடை, பாதிரியார் வெண்மேலங்கி

surplice in Tagalog

liturgical vestment: rokete

surplice in Arabic

liturgical vestment: مدرعة

surplice in Indonesian

liturgical vestment: superpli, surplis

Examples of surplice in a sentence

[…] the flagstones of the floor, the mats, the banners above the choir, the steps of the ambo, the ancient books black with age, the cassocks and surplices, were all inundated with light.1918 [1878], chapter 3, in Aylmer and Louise Maude, transl., Anna Karenina, Cambridge: Oxford University Press, translation of Анна...
He was a wide man and looked wider in his surplice, especially from our pew, which was close up under the pulpit.1942, Emily Carr, “The Blessing”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC:

Forms of surplice

plural	surplices

Origin of surplice

Inherited from Middle English surplys, from Old French surpeliz, from Medieval Latin superpelliceum, from Latin super (“over”) and pellis (“fur”).

Words formed from surplice

Questions about surplice

What does surplice mean?: Surplice means a liturgical vestment of the Christian Church in the form of a tunic of white linen or cotton material, with wide or moderately wide sleeves, reaching to the hips or knees, usually featuring lace decoration and embroidered bordures.
What is surplice in Tamil?: Surplice in Tamil is தியக்கோனாடை, பாதிரியார் வெண்மேலங்கி. See Surplice meaning in Tamil.
How do you use surplice in a sentence?: […] the flagstones of the floor, the mats, the banners above the choir, the steps of the ambo, the ancient books black with age, the cassocks and surplices, were all inundated with light.
What part of speech is surplice?: Surplice is a noun.
How do you pronounce surplice?: Surplice is pronounced /ˈsɝplɪs/ (US).
What is the plural of surplice?: The plural of surplice is surplices.

Words near surplice in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: surplice (page history and authors); surplice (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-surplice.wav.

Cite this entry: “surplice.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/surplice. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.