surface-active

1. 1.

   capable of lowering the surface tension of a liquid; used especially of detergents

   Similaractive

Questions about surface-active

What does surface-active mean?

surface-active means "capable of lowering the surface tension of a liquid; used especially of detergents".

How many syllables are in surface-active?

surface-active has 5 syllables: sur-fa-ce--ac-tive. The stress falls on "ce-".

Is surface-active a common word?

surface-active is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.