immersion

See also: Immersion

English

Etymology

From late Middle English, borrowed from Late Latin immersiō, immersiōnem (“dipping”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɪˈmɜːʃən/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɪˈmɝʒən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)ʒən

Noun

immersion (countable and uncountable, plural immersions)

1. The act of immersing or the condition of being immersed.
   1. The total submerging of a person in water as an act of baptism.
      • 2016, Risto Uro, Ritual and Christian Beginnings, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 98:

        Jesus did not become known as a baptizer (cf. however John 3:26 and 4:1), but we can recognize the same ritual structure in his healing practice as in John's immersion.

   2. Deep engagement in something.
      • 1988 December 11, Elizabeth Pincus, “Truman Capote: The Gossip, The Dirt”, in Gay Community News, volume 16, number 22, page 7:

        In examining Capote, Clarke follows the course of the precocious writer's life with painstaking attention to gossipy detail. It's an exhaustive roller coaster of a read, a high-tilt immersion into the social swirl and scandal that accompanied most of Capote's adult life.

      • 2016, David Waugh, Sally Neaum, Rosemary Waugh, Children's Literature in Primary Schools, page 80:

        Recognising and knowing how to understand visual imagery in relation to a narrative in picture books is primarily a matter of immersion in books within a specific culture.

2. (British, Ireland, informal) An immersion heater.
   • 2020, Kathleen MacMahon, Nothing But Blue Sky, Penguin, →ISBN:

     She left the immersion on all the time, while I had been reared under pain of death to turn it off as soon as the bathwater was heated.

3. (mathematics) A smooth map whose differential is everywhere injective, related to the mathematical concept of an embedding.
   • 2006, William F. Basener, Topology and Its Applications, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 82:

     Note that every embedding is an immersion, but the converse is not true. For an immersion to be an embedding, it must be one-to-one and the inverse must be continuous.

4. (astronomy) The disappearance of a celestial body, by passing either behind another, as in the occultation of a star, or into its shadow, as in the eclipse of a satellite.

   Antonym: emersion

   • 2009, Steven Wepster, Between Theory and Observations, Springer Science, →ISBN, page 178:

     An occultation of a star by the moon provides two sharply defined observable phenomena: the disappearance of a star behind the disc of the moon (called its immersion), and its subsequent reappearance (or emersion).

5. (education) A form of foreign-language teaching where the language is used intensively to teach other subjects to a student.
   • 2001, Mary Goebel Noguchi, Sandra Fotos, Studies in Japanese Bilingualism, Multilingual Matters, →ISBN, page 272:

     Although numerous studies have reported the effectiveness of immersion programmes in developing relatively high levels of second language proficiency without any tradeoff of first language development or subject matter mastery, little is known of immersion education in Japan.

6. One's suspension of disbelief while reading, playing a video game, etc. The experience of losing oneself in a fictional world.
7. (art) A creative relationship with one's social and ecological environment as practiced by the Brooklyn Immersionists.

Derived terms

• full immersion
• immersion blender
• immersion foot
• immersion journalism
• immersion lens
• immersion oil
• parallel immersion

 

Related terms

• immerse
• immerser
• immersive

 

Translations

the act of immersing or the condition of being immersed

Bulgarian: потапяне n (potapjane) Catalan: immersió (ca) f Czech: ponoření n, potopení n, ponor (cs) m Dutch: onderdompeling (nl) Finnish: upotus (fi), upottaminen (fi) French: immersion (fr) f German: Eintauchen n Gothic: 𐌳𐌰𐌿𐍀𐌴𐌹𐌽𐍃 f (daupeins) Greek: Ancient: βαφή f (baphḗ) Hungarian: (act led by another) belemerítés, belemártás (hu), alámerítés (hu), (condition) belemerülés (hu), megmerítkezés Irish: bá m, deochadh (ga) m, folcadh m, fothragadh m, tumadh m Maori: rumakanga Portuguese: imersão (pt) Russian: погруже́ние (ru) n (pogružénije) Scottish Gaelic: tumadh m Spanish: inmersión (es) f Telugu: మునక (te) (munaka)

the total submerging of a person in water as an act of baptism

Finnish: upotuskaste (fi) German: Untertauchen n Hungarian: megmerítkezés, alámerülés (hu), keresztelés (hu), keresztség (hu), vízkeresztség Spanish: inmersión (es) m

deep engagement in something

Hungarian: elmerülés (hu), elmélyedés (hu)

in mathematics

Chinese: Mandarin: 浸入 (zh) (jìnrù) French: immersion (fr) f German: Immersion (de) f Portuguese: imersão (pt) f

Further reading

• Immersion in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
• immersion on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “immersion”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Anagrams

• semi-minor, semiminor

Finnish

Noun

immersion

1. genitive singular of immersio

Anagrams

• seminormi

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin immersiō, immersiōnem.

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

immersion f (plural immersions)

1. immersion
2. language immersion

Related terms

• immerger
• immerseur

Further reading

• “immersion”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.