##  [Surprisal](/index.php/surprisal) 

  ##  [Surprisal](https://humanitites.quantumdictionary.io/surprisal-0) 

  

 [![Humanities & Arts Dictionary](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2026-01/Humanities%20%26%20Arts.png.webp?itok=4SMNHqFS)](/index.php/topic-specific-dictionaries/humanities-arts)



**Humanities & Arts Dictionary**

 







 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

Definition

A pointwise information-theoretic measure of how unexpected a linguistic unit is given its context, defined as the negative logarithm of the conditional probability of the unit (−log P(unit | context)); typically expressed in bits when log base 2 is used.