the.com/surcharge
A fee for the privilege of paying a fee.
means An extra charge added on top of the normal price, usually tacked on for some special circumstance like a card payment, fuel, or holiday peak.
from Built from the prefix 'sur-' (over, above, from French sur, ultimately Latin super) plus 'charge' (to load, burden — from Old French charger, tracing back to Latin carricare, 'to load a cart'). So a surcharge is literally an 'overload' — an extra weight piled on top of the cart you already agreed to pull.
- origin
- from French sur plus charger, to overload
- credit cards
- many states cap or ban them entirely
- airlines
- mastered renaming fares as surcharges since 1990s
- psychology
- feels worse than an equal price hike