Surmount

//sɚˈmaʊnt// verb

verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To get or be over without touching or resting on; to overcome. transitive

    "this difficulty may perhaps be surmounted by care and art"

  2. 2
    be or do something to a greater degree wordnet
  3. 3
    To cap; to sit on top of. transitive

    "The boiler had a large dome over the firebox, inside the cab, surmounted by Ramsbottom safety valves."

  4. 4
    get on top of; deal with successfully wordnet
  5. 5
    reach the highest point of wordnet
Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    be on top of wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
overcomescalesurpassachieveascendbaffle

Example

More examples

"In other words, physical obstacles, perhaps unknown to the original surveyor and engineer, will require alterations to be made in order to surmount them."

Etymology

From Middle English surmounten, from Old French surmonter (“to rise above, surmount”), from sur- (“above”) + monter (“to mount”), equivalent to sur- + mount.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.