emergent, a. and n.
(ɪˈmɜːdʒənt)
[a. L. ēmergent-em: see emergence.]
A. adj.
1. a. Rising out of a surrounding medium, e.g. water.
| 1627 May Lucan iv. 141 Emergent hills t'appeare began. 1682 Weekly Mem. Ingen. 355 One part is emergent above the water. a 1774 Ferguson Month of April, Brittania..Floating emergent on the frigid zone. 1851 Ruskin Stones Ven. II. vi, The great plain, broken by an emergent rock or clump of trees. |
b. fig. with direct reference to lit. sense.
| 1636 B. Jonson Discov. (1692) 693 The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him. He is not easily emergent. 1647 May Hist. Parl. iii. vi. 102 Parliament was..so..sunke..that nothing but an extraordinary providence could make it again emergent. 1763 Shenstone Elegies v. 27 Hope, still emergent, still contemns the wave. a 1797 H. Walpole Mem. Geo. II I. 376 The emergent humour of his people. |
2. a. That is in process of issuing forth.
| 1640 Shirley Opportunity Ded., This poem..emergent from the press. 1728 Thomson Spring 263 This..emergent from the gloomy wood, The glaring lion saw. 1838 J. Struthers Poetic Tales 38 The sun emergent smiled. |
b. spec. in Astron. (see quot.); in Optics said of a ray of light after passing through a refracting medium; so also of a ray of heat.
| 1676 Newton in Phil. Trans. XI. 558 The incident refractions were..equal to the emergent. 1721 Bailey s.v., When a Star is getting out of the Sun Beams, and ready to become visible, it is said to be emergent. 1822 J. Imison Sc. & Art I. 246 The emergent rays will be collected to a focus. 1863 Tyndall Heat ix. (1870) 287 Heat emergent from these respective plates. |
c. Science. That emerges unpredictably as the result of an evolutionary process, spec. in emergent evolution.
| 1915 [see emergence 2]. 1923 C. L. Morgan (title) Emergent evolution. Ibid. i. 1 Under what I here call emergent evolution stress is laid on this incoming of the new. 1928 Observer 1 June 5/3 That growing body of thought called ‘Emergent Evolution’. 1932 Discovery Apr. 108/2 One of the salient features in recent aetiology (i.e. evolution lore) has been the recognition of the more or less open secret expressed in the term ‘emergent evolution’... It has become evident that the Ascent of Life has been a succession of ‘emergent’ steps, novelties that are creative rather than ‘additive’, such as birds from ancestral reptiles. |
3. fig. a. That is in process of rising into notice.
| 1654 H. L'Estrange Chas. I (1655) 8 The self same spirit of contest..was emergent long before that marriage. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. ii. vi. vi, Either emergent or else emerged and full-blown. 1851 J. H. Newman Cath. in Eng. 189 There are emergent parties in this country. |
b. Of a nation: that is newly independent; of a people: that is conscious of its national identity.
| 1954 N.Y. Times Mag. 31 Oct. vi. 13 The ambitions and the unquenchable hope of emergent Africa. 1957 H. Thomas World's Game xv. 191 The chauvinistic young foreign ministers of emergent countries. 1960 Dialy Tel. 13 Jan. 10/2 Each of the ‘emergent’ territories in Africa has different problems, to which each must find its own best solution. 1963 Listener 7 Feb. 233/1 They [sc. the Fijians] just will not be emergent or emancipated. |
4. fig. That arises from or out of something prior; consequent, derivative.
| c 1619 R. Jones Serm. Resur. in Phenix II. 488 Declining all emergent controversys. 1650 Venner Via Recta Advt. 370 From whose [blood] losse or want so great hurts are emergent. a 1716 South (J.), A necessity emergent from and inherent in the things themselves. 1833 Sir J. Herschel Astron. xiii. §689 (1858) The changes of excentricity emergent..from the action of the normal force. |
5. Casually or unexpectedly arising; not specially provided for. arch.
| 1593 Bilson Govt. Christ's Ch. 375 To amend all matters emergent. 1628 Digby Voy. Medit. (1868) 3 That the Admirall may giue directions vpon emergent occasions. 1653 H. Cogan Diod. Sic. 238 It is their custome after meate to fall into some emergent discourse. 1726 Ayliffe Parerg. 282 Allowances of Money paid to Persons for emergent Services. 1845–6 Trench Huls. Lect. Ser. i. ii. 33 Occasional documents called forth by emergent needs. |
¶ Used for ‘urgent’, ‘pressing’.
| 1706 De Foe Jure Div. Pref. 1 To perswade their Princes to burst them in their most emergent Occasions. 1717 Lady M. W. Montague Lett. II. xlvii. 45 The most emergent necessity. 1878 Macm. Mag. Jan. 254/1 Certain petty and emergent repairs. 1881 Spectator 19 Feb. 245 The provocation was of the most emergent kind. 1882 Sir R. Temple Men & Events viii. 182–3 If a matter was politically emergent..he cast away his over-caution. |
6. Required for emergencies.
| 1800 Wellington Let. in Gurw. Disp. I. 65 I have this day sent a supply of emergent ammunition. |
† 7. emergent year: transl. of med.L. annus emergens. Obs.
The term was used by Gervase of Tilbury, who says that the Jews have three modes of reckoning their years: viz., annum usualem, which they employ in conformity with the practice of their Christian neighbours, beginning on 1 Jan.; annum legitimum, which begins in April; and annum emergentem, which is reckoned from their departure from Egypt. In this passage emergens has its usual med.L. sense ‘arising out of a particular circumstance’ (cf. 4, 5); but after the publication of Gervase in Leibnitz Script. Rer. Brunsv. (1707–10) the phrase annus emergens was taken to mean ‘the initial year of an era’ (a misconception to which the sentence, apart from its context, easily lends itself). Hence the modern equivalents of the L. phrase, with this incorrect explanation, found their way into 18th c. dictionaries of Fr., Sp., and Eng.; but we have failed to discover any evidence that they actually came into use in those langs. A passage from the same ultimate source as that in Gervase occurs in Higden (see quot. 1450).
| c 1450 tr. Higden's Polychron. (Harl. MS. 2261) I. 37 Also there is a yere emergente as anendes theyme begynnengs from May when thei wente from Egipte. 1736 Bailey, Emergent year [with erroneous explanation as above]. Hence in mod. Dicts. |
B. n.
1. † a. An outcome, incidental result. Obs.
| 1528 State Lett. in Burnet Hist. Ref. II. 89 In this cause of Matrimony with all the emergents and dependencies upon the same. ? 1656 Bramhall Replic. vi. 235 The consideration of one or two circumstances or emergents. |
b. In wider use: something that emerges.
| 1920 Challenge 15 Oct. 337/2 The growing estrangement [between England and Ireland] which is the mildest emergent from the tragedy. |
† 2. An unforeseen occurrence, a contingency not specially provided for; = emergency 3 b. Obs.
| 1620 Brent tr. Sarpi's Hist. Counc. Trent 658 To be able to giue a rule for all emergents as the times doe require. 1637–50 Row Hist. Kirk (1842) 47 Maters falling out, new incidents and emergents. a 1714 Burnet Own Time II. 74 By an unlooked for emergent, the session was broke. 1720 Wodrow Corr. (1843) II. 491 My behaviour in this emergent. |
3. Science. An effect produced by a combination of several causes, but not capable of being regarded as the sum of their individual effects. Opposed to resultant.
| 1874 Lewes Problems Life & Mind I. 98. 1928 C. E. M. Joad Future of Life vi. 105 The mind is an ‘emergent’ upon the combination of two constituents—namely the body and what Professor Broad calls the ‘psychic factor’. 1936 Nature 28 Mar. 522/2 The system of thought which he [sc. C. Lloyd Morgan] ultimately propounded was what he called a philosophy of evolution, but evolution as meaning the coming into existence of something in some sense new; and this something new, in a specialised sense, he labelled, adopting G. H. Lewes's term, ‘emergent’, as contrasted with resultant. 1959 Listener 8 Jan. 58/1 When Alexander speaks of ‘emergents’ he sometimes means qualities which some psychologists nowadays would call the Gestalt properties of ordered systems..but sometimes he means something more like the possibility of a new way of functioning released through a particular kind of ordered structure. |