To surrender means to stop fighting and admit defeat, or to give up something you have or control. When an army surrenders in battle, the soldiers lay down their weapons and accept that they've lost. When a criminal surrenders to police, they turn themselves in rather than continuing to run or resist arrest.

Surrendering isn't always about warfare or crime. You might surrender your seat on the bus to someone who needs it more, or surrender the remote control after your brother complains you've been hogging it. When you surrender something, you're handing over control or possession, sometimes reluctantly.

The word carries different emotional weight depending on the situation. Surrendering in battle might feel humiliating, like admitting total failure. But sometimes surrendering shows wisdom, like when a general surrenders to save his soldiers' lives rather than fighting a battle he can't win.

People also use surrender to describe giving up in a broader sense. A student might surrender to exhaustion and go to bed, or a hiker lost in the woods might finally surrender to fear. In these cases, surrender means stopping your resistance to something that feels overwhelming. The related noun is surrender, as in “the general signed the terms of surrender.”