immersion

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or an instance of immersing.
2. n. The condition of being immersed.
3. n. Baptism performed by totally submerging a person in water.
4. n. Astronomy The obscuring of a celestial body by another or by the shadow of another.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of immersing, or the state of being immersed; a sinking or dipping into a fluid.
2. n. Specifically A mode of administering baptism by dipping or plunging the whole person into water.
3. n. Figuratively, the act of overwhelming, or the state of being deeply engaged; absorption: as, immersion in scientific studies.
4. n. In astronomy, the disappearance of a celestial body by passing either behind another or into its shadow: opposed to emersion. The occultation of a star is immersion of the first kind; the eclipse of a satellite, immersion of the second kind. Also called incidence.
5. n. In microscopy, the placing of a drop of liquid, such as water, between the object-glass and the object. The rays of light thus pass into the objective from a denser medium than the air which is otherwise present, and there is consequently less loss of light at the two reflecting surfaces; such an objective (immersion-objective or immersion-lens) has the advantage of greater working distance than a “dry objective.” If instead of water a liquid having the same refractive and dispersive powers as the glass is employed, the method is called homogeneous immersion.
6. n. In ceramics, the application of the glaze to a piece of pottery by plunging it into a vessel filled with the glaze in a liquid state.
7. n. An antiquated term for the introduction of a solid substance into a liquid reagent in order to produce chemical change, as the calcination of tin by immersion in nitric acid.

Wiktionary

1. n. the act of immersing or the condition of being immersed
2. n. the total submerging of a person in water as an act of baptism
3. n. UK, Ireland, informal an immersion heater
4. n. mathematics a smooth map whose differential is everywhere injective, related to the mathematical concept of an embedding

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of immersing, or the state of being immersed; a sinking within a fluid; a dipping.
2. n. Submersion in water for the purpose of Christian baptism, .
3. n. The state of being overhelmed or deeply absorbed; deep engagedness.
4. n. (Astron.) The dissapearance of a celestail body, by passing either behind another, as in the occultation of a star, or into its shadow, as in the eclipse of a satellite; -- opposed to emersion.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. sinking until covered completely with water
2. n. (astronomy) the disappearance of a celestial body prior to an eclipse
3. n. complete attention; intense mental effort
4. n. a form of baptism in which part or all of a person's body is submerged
5. n. the act of wetting something by submerging it