Merge & Whelm

It's interesting to look at water as you stand at the terminus between salt and sand. You watch the white wheat shift, and learn that is silicon dioxide, polymeric, hugely macromolecular white dust – sand, sand, sand. And it comes to you that there are words for what you see as the water covers the sea, as the salt covers the sand.

The word 'merge', from Latin mergitur, meant originally to dissolve or fully sink something into a liquid. For example, the motto of the city of Paris, 'Fluctuat nec mergitur', means 'she is not overwhelmed by the waves'. To merge (or 'immerse') something is to make it disappear into a fluid medium. From this we get 'submerge', implying something vanishing beneath a surface (not necessarily into it) like a submarine.

We also get 'emerge', which is the reverse process – something arising from a liquid or fluid medium. An emergency, therefore, is an event arising from the fluid environment; it is implicitly sudden, it is something demanding a response.

But as you ponder 'merge', you also see 'whelm'; the word is Old English, perhaps of Teutonic origin. It means 'to cover completely', and (strangely enough) is thus the source of the word 'helm' – something that covers completely. To whelm is to submerge totally, and by extension, drown. To overwhelm is to do that conclusively and excessively, while to underwhelm probably means that you haven't done it enough (or enough to ensure drowning).

Some might think, therefore, that 'helm' (head-covering) leads to 'helm' (as in 'lead' or 'direct', or a source thereof). This is unfortunately not so. The 'helm' that refers to steering a ship or guiding an enterprise comes from a different word which means 'handle' – as in the handle of a rudder or tiller.

In the meantime, it's difficult having to cope with situations in which the helm is insufficient – in either sense of the word.