v. [ad. L. submergĕre, var. of summergĕre: see SUB- 2 and MERGE. Cf. F. submerger, It. sommergere, Sp., Pg. sumergir.]
1. pass. To be covered with water; to be sunk under water.
1606. Shaks., Ant. & Cl., II. v. 94. So halfe my Egypt were submerg’d and made A Cesterne for scal’d Snakes.
1688. Luttrell, Brief Rel. (1857), I. 453. That the island of Madera’s … had been destroyed by an earthquake and submerg’d in the sea.
1794. R. J. Sulivan, View Nat., II. 430. Those lost people, whom we have supposed to have been submerged, when the present face of things was drawn into existence.
1833. Lyell, Princ. Geol., III. 116. Tracts that may be submerged or variously altered in depth.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xxxix. (1856), 359. The white whale … whistled, while submerged and swimming under our brig.
1877. Huxley, Physiogr., 212. The remains of a vast forest … now submerged to a depth of perhaps twenty or thirty feet below high-water.
1880. Dawkins, Early Man in Brit., i. 1. He tells of continents submerged, and of ocean bottoms lifted up to become mountains.
fig. a. 1625. Beaum. & Fl., Love’s Cure, V. iii. Many of his chief Gentry … spoyld, lost, and submerged in the impious inundation and torrent of their still-growing malice.
1856. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), I. 98. The miserable monks … whose minds submerged in the ‘mare tenebrosum’ of the cloister, [etc.].
1903. F. W. H. Myers, Hum. Pers., I. p. xxi. Faculty, which is kept thus submerged, not by its own weakness, but by the constitution of man’s personality.
2. trans. To cause to sink or plunge into water; to place under water.
1611. Cotgr., Submerger, to submerge; to plunge or sinke vnder, whirken or ouerwhelme by,… the water.
1726. Bailey, To Submerge, to bend a Thing very low, to drown or dip.
1817. Kirby & Sp., Entomol. (1818), II. 212. Experimentalists may…, without danger, submerge a hive of bees, when they want to examine them particularly.
1870. Yeats, Nat. Hist. Comm., 91. The shallow and tideless Baltic has scarcely a sounding that could submerge St. Paul’s Cathedral.
fig. 1855. Bain, Senses & Int., II. ii. § 19 (1864), 144. The magnitude of the sensation is attested by its power to submerge a great many irritations.
1907. Forsyth, Posit. Preaching, iv. 124. Our demands must never be submerged by our sympathies.
3. intr. To sink or plunge under water; to undergo submersion. Now rare.
1652. Kirkman, Clerio & Lozia, 123. A Cork sometimes elevateth it self, and then submergeth under the water.
1808. Gentl. Mag., LXXVIII. 670/2. Some say, they [sc. swallows] submerge in ponds.
1823. J. Badcock, Dom. Amusem., 208. The ascending wires (where they submerge) … should be flattish at the sides.
1863. Ld. Lytton, Ring of Amasis, I. 48. He submerged, and we lost sight of him.
fig. 1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. III. iv. Plot after plot, emerging and submerging, like ignes fatui in foul weather. Ibid., III. II. v. This Question of the Trial … emerged and submerged among the infinite of questions and embroilments.
Hence Submerging vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1882. May Crommelin, Brown-Eyes, viii. Alluvial deposit left there ages ago by the submerging waters.
1888. Schaff, Hist. Chr. Ch., Mod. Chr., 219. Faith is the submerging of the old man, and the emerging of the new man.
1902. Daily Chron., 5 April, 7/6. The submerging was accomplished in 6 sec.
