Emergere

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To come forth into view or notice; to rise up or appear from a hidden or obscure place; to become evident or manifest
2. The act of becoming visible or known after being concealed; to ascend or come out from beneath or behind something; to reveal oneself or something previously unseen
3. Manifesting or becoming perceptible after concealment; rising or projecting upwards or outwards from a surface; disclosing or surfacing to public awareness or perception

Etymology: "Emergere" is Latin, built from "e," meaning "out of" or "from," and "mergere," "to dip, plunge, or immerse." Its literal sense was therefore "to rise out of" a liquid, so a swimmer breaking the surface or a head coming up out of water was the original picture. The verb is the source of English "emerge," which entered the language in the 1600s, and the English word kept that sense of rising out of something before the figurative sense of coming into view took over. The Latin root "mergere" is also the source of "merge," which is a fun connection: the two English words look like cousins because they are, though "merge" came in much later, in the 1600s, with the sense of sinking or plunging into something before it came to mean blending together. Both words carry the old image of a body moving in or out of water.

Synonyms: emerge, appear, arise, surface, materialize

Antonyms: disappear, submerge, vanish, recede, withdraw