v. Also 6–9 en-, ingulph. [f. EN-1 + GULF; cf. Fr. engouffrer, earlier engoulfer (which may be the source).]
1. trans. To swallow up in a gulf, abyss or whirlpool; to plunge into a gulf; to plunge deeply and inextricably into a surrounding medium. Also refl. and intr. for refl.
α. 1555. Eden, Decades W. Ind. (Arb.), 261. They were engulfed by chance in the great sea.
1580. Sidney, Ps. clxiii. 54 (R.). In destructions river Engulph and swallow those, Whose hate [etc.].
1600. Fairfax, Tasso, XV. xxiv. 271. Now deepe engulphed in the mightie flood They saw not Gades.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., II. 425, note. A city … having formerly been engulphed by an earthquake.
1831. Carlyle, in Froude, Life, i. (1882), II. 151. Not upon the quicksand, where resting will but engulph you deeper.
1869. Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), III. xii. 235. In that dangerous passage the careless traveller might easily be engulfed.
β. c. 1630. Drumm. of Hawth., Poems, Wks. 34/1. Her [Earth’s] surface shakes … Towns them ingulf … Now nought remaineth but a Waste of Sand.
a. 1711. Ken, Poet. Wks. (1721), IV. 29. They expire, Ingulfing in infernal Fire.
1735. Somerville, Chase, III. 135. Another in the treach’rous Bog Lies flound’ring, half ingulph’d.
1816. Shelley, Alastor, 365. A cavern there … Ingulphed the rushing sea.
1855. H. Reed, Lect. Eng. Lit., x. 323. Shelley was overtaken by a Mediterranean thunder-storm, and ingulfed in the deep waters.
b. refl. and pass. Of a river: To discharge itself into, be lost in, the sea; also, to disappear underground.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 43. Made by the Riuer Indus, which their ingulfes herselfe into the Indian Seas.
1667. Milton, P. L., IV. 225. A River … through the shaggie hill Pass’d underneath ingulft.
1772. Mason, Eng. Garden, II. 537 (R.). That hallow’d spring; thence, in the porous earth Long while ingulph’d.
1821. Brydges, Lett. Continent, 12. [The Rhone] makes itself a passage among the rocks at the extremity of Mount Jura, ingulphs itself for some time, [etc.].
2. transf. (chiefly humorous.) To swallow up like an abyss; to bury completely.
1829. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), I. 124. The autumnal glutton who engulphs their [oysters’] gentle substances within his own.
1863. Fr. A. Kemble, Resid. in Georgia, 58. Shirt gills which absolutely ingulfed his black visage.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., I. 182/2. To procure these insignificant morsels, he engulfs a whole shoal of them at once in his capacious jaws.
3. fig.
α. 1603. Hayward, Answ. Doleman, viii. (T.). Vpon euery giddie and brainlesse warrant to engulphe our selues in those passages.
1669. Woodhead, St. Teresa, II. 264. That holy Soul went wholly immersed (if I may so speak) and engulfed in God.
1876. Mozley, Univ. Serm., iii. 71. The power which mere sensual pleasure has of engulphing us in the vulgar sensation of physical life.
β. 1597. T. Morley, Introd. Mus., To Rdr. To leaue that vnbrought to an end, in the which I was so farre ingulfed.
1647. Ward, Simp. Cobler (ed. 3), 57. Into what importable head-tearings and heart-searchings you will be ingulfed.
1784. Cowper, Task, III. 816. London ingulphs them all. The shark is there And the shark’s prey.
1864. Lowell, Fireside Trav., 126. O Death, thou ever roaming shark, Ingulf me in eternal dark!
† II. 4. To cut into gulfs or bays. Obs. rare.
1632. Lithgow, Trav., X. 496. Because of the Sea ingulfing the Land, and cutting it in so many Angles.
