émerger

Émerger is a French verb meaning to come out from a surrounding medium and become visible or perceptible, or more figuratively to arise, appear, or come into being. Literally, it can describe something surfacing from water or darkness; figuratively, it is used for ideas, movements, people, or phenomena that rise to prominence or attention.

Etymology and relatives: the verb comes from Latin emergere, formed from ex- “out of” and mergere “to dip, plunge.” In French, émerger is a regular -er verb and is used in various registers, from everyday speech to academic and journalistic writing. The related noun émergence denotes the act or process of emerging, and the adjective émergent describes something that is newly arising, such as an émergent market or an émergent phenomenon.

Usage and contexts: literally, one speaks of something that emerges from a medium, for example a fish emerging from water or fog that begins to emerge at dawn. Figuratively, it is common to say that ideas or actors emerge within a field, or that a trend or movement is emerging. In social and economic discourse, the term often appears in the expression économique émergente or l’émergence des pays émergents, where émergence and émergent describe processes or actors that are gaining visibility or influence.

See also: émergence, émergent, émerger des expressions.

Notes: 변 The word is distinct from similar-sounding terms in other languages and is used specifically to convey the sense of surfacing or coming into being, whether physically or conceptually.