ppl. a. [f. prec. + -ED1. (The form water-lodged in Lescallier Vocab. des Termes de Marine Anglois et François, Paris 1777, and, in Encycl. Brit., 1797, is an ill-advised attempt at correction of water-logged in Falconer’s Dict.)]
1. Of a ship, boat: Flooded with water by leakage or overflow so as to become impaired in buoyancy, heavy, and unmanageable.
1769–76. Falconer, Dict. Marine, Water-logged, the state of a ship when, by receiving a great quantity of water into her hold, by leaking, &c. she has become heavy and inactive upon sea, so as to yield without resistance to the efforts of every wave rushing over her decks.
1797. S. James, Narr. Voyage, 135. The vessel being nearly water-logged, every high sea washed over her.
1817. Oxley, Jrnls. Two Exped. N. S. Wales (1820), 145. Our little bark was however completely water logged.
1826. Southey, Vind. Eccl. Angl., 478. The Virgin visibly conveyed the water-logged ship over the breakers safely to the shore.
1847. H. Miller, First Impr. Eng., ii. (1857), 18. As if becalmed in its voyage, a water-logged hulk, that failed to press on towards its port of destination.
1865. Parkman, Huguenots, iii. (1875), 40. The gale subsided … and … the crazy, water-logged vessel again bore slowly toward France.
1912. ‘G. A. Birmingham,’ Inviolable Sanctuary, v. 68. He climbed over the dredger, which was lying alongside, and dropped from her into a small water-logged punt.
b. transf.
1840. Hood, Up Rhine, 61. You will be glad to hear that we have escaped undrowned from that water-logged country called Holland.
1848. Thoreau, Maine Woods (1894), 7. That other [house] with a waterlogged look, as if it were still airing and drying its basement.
c. fig. and in fig. context.
1795. Burke, Regic. Peace, iv. Sel. Wks. (1892), 350. Tumbling from the Gallick coast, the victorious tenth wave shall … poop the shattered, weather-beaten, leaky, water-logged vessel [sc. the Government].
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. VI. vi. A poor water-logged Legislature can pronounce nothing.
1867. Lowell, Percival, Pr. Wks. 1890, II. 141. His mind drifts, too waterlogged to answer the helm.
2. Of floating bodies: Saturated with water so as to be deprived of buoyancy.
1832. Lyell, Princ. Geol., II. 241. When timber is drifted down by a river, it is often arrested by lakes, and becoming water-logged it may sink.
1851. Mantell, Petrifactions, iv. § 2. 370. After death … the body was thus suspended with the belly uppermost, till it became water-logged, and buried in the silt.
1882. E. O’Donovan, Merv Oasis, I. 315. Water-logged tree trunks clung among the roots projecting into the sluggish stream.
3. Suffering from, deteriorated or rendered unserviceable by, excessive saturation with water.
1829. Bone Manure, Rep. Doncast. Comm., 8. A gravelly soil may embrace … the waterlogged yellow clay.
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, etc., 969. In the course of years, however, many water-logged fissures come to be cut by the workings.
1858. Glenny, Gard. Every-day Bk., 208/1. All the plants throughout the house should be often examined to see that none are pot-bound, or water-logged.
1893. Outing, XXII. 150/1. A cyclist cannot extract enjoyment from a water-logged day.
1895. Daily News, 24 June, 8/5. They have completed arrangements for borrowing £100,000 to be spent in draining waterlogged mines.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., IV. 613. The arterial pressure falls at last … and in spite of free perspiration the tissues become water-logged.
1897. Mary Kingsley, W. Africa, 607. I … began to fear that the rotten water-logged earth we were on might give way.
b. Of butter: Containing an excess of water.
1906. H. L. Puxley, in Macm. Mag., June, 608. A large quantity of water-logged, milk-blended butter was being manufactured for the purpose of being sold fraudulently.
Hence Waterloggedness.
1854. Thoreau, Walden, iv. Writ. 1906, II. 140. Sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention.
