Plunge

How to spell plunge

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce plunge

What does plunge mean?

1. verbTo move, fall, or thrust suddenly and forcefully into something, especially downward or into liquid.
2. nounA sudden dive, fall, or act of immersing oneself, often used of a bold decision.

Plunge in a sentence

• verb

  The swimmers plunge into the cold lake every day at dawn.

• noun

  After months of saving, they finally took the plunge and bought a house.

• verb

  A sudden glut of supply can plunge oil prices to record lows.

• noun

  The morning plunge into the hotel pool became part of his routine.

Where does plunge come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word arrived in English in the late 1300s from the Old French plongier, meaning 'to immerse' or 'to drive down'. That verb traces back to a Vulgar Latin form *plumbicare, built on the Latin plumbum, which simply meant 'lead', the heavy grey metal. The link makes vivid sense: sailors would drop a lead weight, a plummet, on a line to sound the depth of water, so to 'plunge' first carried the idea of sending something heavy straight down into the deep. The same plumbum root survives in 'plumber' (who once worked with lead pipes) and in 'plumb line', and even in the chemical symbol Pb for lead. Over time the watery sense broadened so that plunge now covers any sudden, forceful drop, whether a body into a pool or a price into freefall.

How the word is built

• plunge (from Old French plongier, ultimately from Latin plumbum 'lead')