Emerge

How to spell emerge

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce emerge

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emerge mean?

1. verbTo come into view or become known after being hidden, concealed, or submerged.

Emerge in a sentence

• Divers watched a turtle emerge slowly from the murky water.

• New details about the merger began to emerge during the audit.

Where does emerge come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This verb comes from the Latin emergere, which combined the prefix ex-, meaning 'out', with the verb mergere, meaning 'to dip' or 'to plunge'. Literally, then, emergere described something rising up out of water after being submerged, like a swimmer breaking the surface. English adopted the word in the early 1600s, keeping both the literal sense of coming into view and the figurative sense of facts, problems, or trends becoming apparent. The same mergere root sits inside the close relatives 'merge', 'submerge', and 'immerse', which is a helpful reminder that the heart of the word is spelled merg, not 'murg', even though the stressed vowel sounds like 'ur'. Knowing the root as 'plunge' makes the single e at the start easy to recall, since it is simply ex- worn down to e- before a consonant.

How the word is built

• e- (from ex-: out)
• merg (from Latin mergere: to dip, plunge)
• -e