ppl. a. [f. prec. + -ED1.] Sunk under water; covered or overflowed with water, inundated; Bot. growing entirely under water.
1799. Kirwan, Geol. Ess., 81. The crash and ruin of the submerged continent.
1839. Murchison, Silur. Syst., 503. One of these submerged forests is occasionally seen on the shore at Gupton Burrows.
1847. Grote, Greece, II. xi. III. 197. The history of the vast submerged island of Atlantis.
1857. Henfrey, Bot., 61. When they grow wholly under water (submerged leaves).
1884. Bower & Scott, De Bary’s Phaner., 56. Hair-structures … under all states of adaptation, even in submerged species.
b. fig.; esp. in submerged tenth, that part of the population which is permanently in poverty and misery. (Contrasted with upper ten.)
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., I. V. iv. Happily, in place of the submerged Twenty-six, the Electoral Club is gathering.
1890. W. Booth, In Darkest Eng., I. ii. 22. We have an army of nearly two millions belonging to the submerged classes. Ibid., 23. This Submerged Tenth—is it, then, beyond the reach of the nine-tenths in the midst of whom they live?
absol. 1897. Daily News, 31 March, 8/3. Those who seek to ameliorate the conditions of the submerged.
1903. Westm. Gaz., 18 Feb., 10/1. A … leader of hosts of submerged from the Egypt of slumdom.
