Pronunciation: [səpɹˈɪsə͡l] (IPA) 
The spelling of the word "surprisal" can be confusing as it is not commonly used in everyday language. The IPA phonetic transcription for "surprisal" is /sərˈpraɪzəl/. The sound /s/ is followed by a schwa, then /r/ and /p/ sounds. The word ends with /aɪz/ and /əl/. It is important to note that "surprisal" is not a commonly used word in English, and "surprise" is a more commonly used alternative.
Surprisal is a noun that refers to the state or act of being surprised or startled, typically resulting from something unexpected or unforeseen. It often relates to an unexpected event, occurrence, or revelation that catches someone off guard.
Surprisal can be described as the feeling or emotion experienced when something unexpected happens, causing astonishment, confusion, or disbelief. It encompasses the element of surprise, which involves being taken aback, impressed, or even shocked by something that was not anticipated.
In addition to the emotional aspect, surprisal also encompasses the cognitive component of surprise. It refers to the objective measure of the level of unexpectedness of an event, calculated using principles from information theory or probability theory. Surprisal is frequently used in fields such as linguistics, psychology, and computational science to quantify the amount of information carried by an event or stimulus. It is measured by the logarithm of the reciprocal of the probability of occurrence, thus representing the inverse of the likelihood of an event.
Overall, surprisal encompasses both the subjective emotional experience and the quantitative measure of unexpectedness. It captures the state of being surprised as well as the level of surprise associated with a particular event or piece of information.
The word "surprisal" originated from the Old French term "surpris", which means "to surprise" or "to overtake unexpectedly". It derived from the Latin word "superprēndere", which is a combination of "super" (over, above) and "premō" (to seize, to press). Over time, "surpris" developed into "surprise" in Middle English, and then the suffix "-al" was added to form "surprisal". The term "surprisal" appeared in the English language around the 17th century, and it specifically refers to the action of surprising someone or the state of being surprised.
