[f. SUBMERGE + -ENCE.] The condition of being submerged or covered with water (also Geol., with glacier ice); the state of being flooded or inundated.
1832. Lyell, Princ. Geol., II. 305. The proofs of submergence, during some part of the tertiary period,… are of a most unequivocal character.
1851. Richardson, Geol., ii. 21. The submergence of land by earthquakes.
1872. W. S. Symonds, Rec. Rocks, ix. 310. After the glacial submergence.
1875. Darwin, Insectiv. Pl., iii. 52. A submergence for 47 hrs. had not killed the protoplasm.
b. fig., e.g., a being plunged in thought; the ‘swamping’ of one thing by another; a sinking out of sight or into obscurity.
1872. F. W. Robinson, Bridge of Glass, III. ix. The voice was so low, and the maiden’s submergence so deep, that the grief-stricken figure did not move to the inquiry.
1898. Chr. Herald (N.Y.), 27 April, 368/4. An idea that death is the submergence of everything pleasant by everything doleful.
1903. F. W. H. Myers, Hum. Pers., I. p. xxviii. If the elements of emergence increase, and the elements of submergence diminish, the permeability of the psychical diaphragm may mean genius instead of hysteria.
