emergence
/ɪˈmɜː.d͡ʒ(ə)ns/
emergence · noun — the act of rising out of a fluid, or coming forth from envelopment or concealment, or of rising into view; appearance. It carries an Arena rating of 1730, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, emergence ranks #140 of 17,145 for Most Malleable Words, #1,762 of 17,137 for Most Sublime Words, #2,115 of 17,135 for Most Beautiful Words, #4,982 of 17,136 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
emergence is pronounced /ɪˈmɜː.d͡ʒ(ə)ns/.
Why “emergence” is a great word
A process of coming into view, prominence, or being, arising from obscurity or a surrounding medium. From French émergence, from the verb émerger ("to emerge"), from Latin ēmergere ("to rise out or up"), from ē- ("out") + mergere ("to dip, sink"), first recorded in English 1640–50. Unlike "emergency" (which signals a sudden crisis) or "appearance" (a more general becoming visible), emergence describes the slow, often inevitable, rise into existence from a state of latency. It is the gradual unfurling of a fern from the forest floor, the first coherent thought resolving from the fog of sleep, and the sudden, silent breaking of a whale's back from a flat, grey sea—the quiet, persistent force of something becoming itself.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
Borrowed from French émergence. Doublet of emergency. By surface analysis, emerge + -ence.
noun
- The act of rising out of a fluid, or coming forth from envelopment or concealment, or of rising into view; appearance.e.g.“Some birds do indeed sing through the night of all we can remember, temperature gaugings at the site of our earliest emergence revealing that all was cool then” — 1986, Brad Johnson, “Coming of Age”, in Joseph Beam, editor, In The Life: A Black Gay Anthology, page 19:
- The act of rising out of a fluid, or coming forth from envelopment or concealment, or of rising into view; appearance.; The arising of emergent structure in complex systems.
- An emergency.e.g.“In this dire emergence, the Marquis de Torcy, minister for foreign affairs, offered his services.” — 1790, Charles Hamilton, Transactions During the Reign of Queen Anne:
- An outgrowth from the surface, such as a prickle or wart, differing from hairs in arising from more than the superficial cells, and from spines in arising from a few layers only.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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