[f. as prec. + -ING2.] Rising, swelling, rolling or tossing heavily, as waves.
1566. Studley, trans. Seneca’s Agam., [I.] 624. The surging seas.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., I. v. 38. From surging gulf two Monsters streight were brought.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit. (1637), 634. With surging billowes it came rolling and in-rushing amaine.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 19. [One] surging waue aboue the rest, hit our broad-side.
1671. Milton, P. R., IV. 18. Surging waves against a solid rock.
1793. Burns, Behold the Hour, i. I ’ll often greet the surging swell.
1869. Tozer, Highl. Turkey, I. 381. [The boats] are borne down through the surging current.
b. fig. or in fig. context, of feeling, action, etc.
1576. Fleming, Panopl. Epist., 78. Swallowed vppe in surgeinge seas of sorrowe.
1633. G. Herbert, Temple, Glance, ii. Surging griefs.
1834. De Quincey, in Tait’s Mag., I. 30/2. This moving, surging, billowing world of ours.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., li. (Poem) Surging visions of her destiny.
c. transf. Moving in or as in large waves, undulating heavily or forcibly, heaving (as sound, wind, a crowd, etc.); also, of broadly undulating form, ‘rolling’ (as hills).
1603. H. Petowe, Eliza’s Funeral, B j b. My heauie lookes and all my surdging mones.
1667. Milton, P. L., II. 928. The surging smoak. Ibid., IX. 499. Rising foulds, that tour’d Fould above fould a surging Maze.
1728–46. Thomson, Spring, 745. The surging air receives The plumy burden.
1831. Scott, Ct. Robt., xxix. Hid from view in the surging volumes of darkness.
1847. Emerson, Poems, Monadnoc, 10.
| Up! Where the airy citadel | |
| O’erlooks the surging landscape’s swell! |
1868. Daily News, 22 July, 3/2. The surging, shouting, yelling crowd outside.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., iii. The gradual rise of surging woods.
1891. Farrar, Darkn. & Dawn, l. Two days afterwards Rome was in a sea of surging flame.
