Submerged

How to spell submerged

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce submerged

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does submerged mean?

1. verbPut or sank something beneath the surface of a liquid, especially water.
2. adjectiveLying or kept beneath the surface of water or another liquid.

Submerged in a sentence

• verb

  The rising river submerged the entire car park overnight.

• adjective

  The submerged rocks near the harbour are a hazard to small boats.

• verb

  Divers submerged the cables to protect them from passing ships.

• adjective

  A submerged pipeline carries fresh water across the bay.

Where does submerged come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb submergere, which combined sub-, meaning 'under' or 'beneath', with mergere, meaning 'to dip, plunge, or sink'. The same mergere root surfaces in a cluster of familiar English relatives, including 'merge', 'emerge', 'immerse', and 'submarine', all of them carrying the idea of dipping into or rising out of something. English took 'submerge' in the early 1600s, at first describing things deliberately sunk or flooded under water, and the past form 'submerged' soon doubled as a descriptive adjective for anything lying beneath the surface. The spelling stays helpfully regular: the silent flow from 'merg' to the soft 'ged' sound is the only mild trap, since the g is pronounced like a j. Keeping the literal 'under' sense of sub- in mind anchors both the meaning and the spelling.

How the word is built

• sub- (under)
• merg (to dip, plunge)
• -ed (past tense / adjective ending)