v. [app. f. WATER sb. + LOG v.1
Cf. LOG v.1 3 a, where the only example cited is:—1751. Smollett, Per. Pic., lxxxvi. Several feet of under-water logging in her hold. In this passage 19th-c. editors have altered logging into lodging; this is doubtless wrong, but the sense of ‘logging’ is somewhat obscure. The likeliest view seems to be that it is an absolute use of a transitive sense, ‘to reduce (a ship) to the condition of a log’: cf. quot. 1622 under LOG v.1 1 b, ‘Having lost all her mastes, and being no other than a logge in the sea.’
The finite verb is not recognized in previous Eng. dictionaries, which give only waterlogged ppl. adj.]
1. trans. To render (a ship, etc.) unmanageable by flooding with water: see WATERLOGGED ppl. a.
1779. Forrest, Voy. N. Guinea, 101. The Borneo carried too much sail, just before she foundered; and took in a sea forward, which water-logged her.
1809. Naval Chron., XXII. 57. A sudden leak … water-logged her.
1854. H. Miller, Sch. & Schm. (1858), 17. The fearful wave had waterlogged the Friendship from bow to stern.
1901. Munsey’s Mag., XXV. 345/1. A tremendous sea broke on board,… opened her hatches, and waterlogged her.
2. To saturate with water so as to render inert.
1870. R. W. P. Birch, Disposal Town Sewage, 6. This last-mentioned method of applying sewage to land … waterlogs the earth.
1878. A. C. Ramsay, Phys. Geog., ix. (ed. 5), 137. Beds of coal are not the result of woody matter drifted into, and waterlogged in, lake hollows, by rivers.
3. fig.
1868. M. Pattison, Academ. Org., ii. 29. This alteration added to the assembly about 100 members—and waterlogged Congregation at one stroke.
1904. Daily Chron., 24 March, 4/5. No scheme of purchase … can do otherwise than waterlog the State telephone department with a large amount of unproductive capital.
Hence Water-logging vbl. sb. Also Water-logger. (For the sense cf. WATERLOGGED 3 b.)
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., IV. 321. Pulmonary œdema in renal diseases is not always a mere accompaniment of general water-logging.
1905. Westm. Gaz., 5 Oct., 2/2. Whereas a few years ago only two [butter-making] companies were engaged in water-logging, there were now over 100. Ibid., 2/3. It was his business to cater for the honest trading classes and not for fraudulent water-loggers [in butter-making].
1906. H. L. Puxley, in Macm. Mag., June, 609. There are four main divisions under which adulteration might be classed:—(1) milk-blending, (2) water-logging, (3) margarine-blending, and (4) preservatives.
