Noun

(en noun)

The overside or up-side of a flat object such as a table, or of a liquid.

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=Foreword citation , passage=A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away,

The outside hull of a tangible object.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-05-11, volume=407, issue=8835, page=80, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The climate of Tibet: Pole-land , passage=Of all the transitions brought about on the Earth’s surface by temperature change, the melting of ice into water is the starkest. It is binary. And for the land beneath, the air above and the life around, it changes everything.}}

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Welcome to the plastisphere , passage=[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across.}}

(lb) Outward or external appearance.

:

*(Vicesimus Knox) (1752-1821)

*:Vain and weak understandings, which penetrate no deeper than the surface .

*

*:“A tight little craft,” was Austin’s invariable comment on the matron; and she looked it, always trim and trig and smooth of surface like a converted yacht cleared for action. ¶ Near her wandered her husband, orientally bland, invariably affable,.

The locus of an equation (especially one with exactly two degrees of freedom) in a more-than-two-dimensional space.

(lb) That part of the side which is terminated by the flank prolonged, and the angle of the nearest bastion.

:(Stocqueler)

Noun

(en noun)

The proportion of different parts to make a whole.

The general makeup of something.

(obsolete) An agreement or treaty used to settle differences; later especially, an agreement to stop hostilities; a truce.

* , I.40:

It will stoope and yeeld upon better compositions to him that shall make head against it.

* 1630 , John Smith, True travels , in Kupperman 1988, p.50:

with an incredible courage they advanced to the push of the Pike with the defendants, that with the like courage repulsed, that the Turks retired and fled into the Castle, from whence by a flag of truce they desired composition .

(obsolete) An agreement to pay money in order to clear a liability or obligation; a settling.

* 1745 , Edward Young, Night-Thoughts , II:

Insidious death! should his strong hand arrest, / No composition sets the prisoner free.

(legal) an agreement or compromise by which a creditor or group of creditors accepts partial payment from a debtor.

A mixture or compound; the result of composing.

An essay.

(linguistics) The formation of compound words from separate words.

A work of music, literature or art.

* 1818 , (Jane Austen), A letter dated 8 September 1818:

and how good Mrs. West could have written such books and collected so many hard words, with all her family cares, is still more a matter of astonishment. Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.

(printing) Typesetting.

(label) Applying a function to the result of another.

(obsolete) Consistency; accord; congruity.

* Shakespeare

There is no composition in these news / That gives them credit.

Synthesis as opposed to analysis.

* Sir Isaac Newton

The investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of composition .