[ad. L. submersio, -ōnem, n. of action f. submergĕre, -mers- to SUBMERGE. Cf. F. submersion, It. sommersione, Sp. sumersion, etc.] The action of submerging or condition of being submerged; plunging into, sinking under, or flooding with water; occas. drowning.
1611. Cotgr., Submersion, a submersion, plunging, sinking.
1653. W. Ramesey, Astrol. Restored, 309. Many shipwracks and submersions of ships.
1692. Ray, Disc. (1732), 242. The Submersion of the vast Island of Atlantis.
1781. Cowper, Retirement, 584. All had long suppos’d him dead, By cold submersion, razor, rope, or lead.
1793. trans. Buffon’s Hist. Birds, VI. 471. The submersion of Swallows appears by no means ascertained.
1823. J. Badcock, Dom. Amusem., 196. Half a pound of alum to every pint of water, which may be deemed necessary for the entire submersion of the article to be heated.
1856. Stanley, Sinai & Pal., ii. (1858), 144. Preserved by the salt with which a long submersion in those strange waters has impregnated them.
1910. Encycl. Brit. (ed. 11), III. 365. The earliest literary notices of baptism are far from conclusive in favour of submersion.
