So it's June and I learned a new word: submersible.
At first I read it as "submersile," which sounds like a weapon.
Then it looked like "summersible," something that weathers summer well.
Breaking it down, I thought I would never use submerse; I would use submerge. That's why I don't like submersible.
The word submersible came up in an article about BP's latest attempt to stop the oil spill with robots. If a robot functions underwater, it is submersible.
I really hate to think too long about what a catastrophe this is, and distract myself with words.
Can something be submergible, alternatively? I'd like that.
And immersible? Must be.
If you take a full-immersion language course, you are that which is immersible.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
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6 comments:
I found them both in the dictionary. I was recently inside that German U-Boat at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It is both submergible and submersible, but why we'd need two words, I don't know. BP has really bad karma.
This reminds me of the innocense of holding your breath in the bath tub.
Kathleen - luckily their karma exists in the form of stock on the stock market, which I understand has given new meaning to submerse.
Bob - that is still fun to do.
I always thought the distinction was that something is immesible if you can put it under water and after you take it out and dry it off it will still perform its function. (NOTE: Some coffee makers are immersible, some not. I learned this the hard way).
Something that's submersible is designed to be functional either in or out of water.
I could be waaaaay off base about this,
So submersilbe robots could still be expected to work without pay on dry land?
'So submersilbe robots could still be expected to work without pay on dry land?'
Well, I believe they'd still be functioal, anyway. I personally wouldn't expect anyone to work without pay, robotic/submersible/otherwise, either on dry land, in a bog/marshy wetland or five or six miles down. No.
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