engulfed

verb

past tense of engulf
as in flooded
to cover with a flood high waves from the hurricane engulfed large areas of the coastal community

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of engulfed Gunshots followed by an inferno Police responded to the home on Sunday evening and heard gunshots coming from out back, just before the house was completely engulfed in flames. — Matthew Brown, Los Angeles Times, 26 Aug. 2026 Police responded to the home on Sunday evening and heard gunshots coming from out back, just before the house was completely engulfed in flames. — CBS News, 26 Aug. 2026 Less than an hour after the chaos began, the front of the house was fully engulfed in flames. — N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA Today, 26 Aug. 2026 That is to say nothing of periodic smaller disasters, such as last year's Texas floods that engulfed young campers; the Los Angeles wildfires that chewed through entire neighborhoods; and Typhoon Kalmaegi, which walloped Vietnam and the Philippines. — ABC News, 24 Aug. 2026 That is to say nothing of periodic smaller disasters, such as last year’s Texas floods that engulfed young campers; the Los Angeles wildfires that chewed through entire neighborhoods; and Typhoon Kalmaegi, which walloped Vietnam and the Philippines. — Peter Prengaman, Fortune, 24 Aug. 2026 While the region is engulfed in conflict, the market is showing itself to be immune to the impact of it. — Kathryn Hopkins, Footwear News, 21 Aug. 2026 One person is dead after a fire engulfed a home Tuesday morning in Kansas City’s North Town Fork Creek neighborhood, a fire department spokesman said. — Kansas City Star, 18 Aug. 2026 Officials are investigating after a West Kendall Farm Stores location, known as La Vaquita, became partially engulfed in flames Tuesday morning, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. — Sofia Saric, Miami Herald, 18 Aug. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for engulfed
  1. flooded
  2. overwhelmed
  3. drowned
  4. submerged
Verb
  • Meta is rolling out an obvious fix to make its AI glasses less creepy amid backlash over the glasses’ non-consensual recordings that have flooded the Internet.
    — Ashley Belanger, ArsTechnica, 28 Aug. 2026
  • But New Yorkers flooded social media after news broke, and eventually a petition was made in an effort to save the theater.
    — Amethyst Martinez, USA Today, 28 Aug. 2026
Definition of flooded
Verb
  • Reflecting on her journey, Jones told me last year that her best career advice is to stay open to new experiences and not get overwhelmed by distant goals.
    — Sheryl Estrada, Fortune, 28 Aug. 2026
  • My mother was never one for parting phrases, mainly because she was overwhelmed by a form of timidity that verged on self-erasure.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 26 Aug. 2026
Definition of overwhelmed
Verb
  • Almost exactly a year ago, a 17-year-old Evanston boy drowned after going underwater near a breakwall at Lighthouse Beach.
    — Claire Murphy, Chicago Tribune, 24 Aug. 2026
  • What few cheers came from the fans were drowned out by loud boos.
    — Justice delos Santos, Mercury News, 21 Aug. 2026
Definition of drowned
Verb
  • The kind where you’re blindfolded, submerged into a dark room, escorted to your seat, and left to experience an entire meal in near-total darkness?
    — Tiana Randall, Forbes.com, 22 Aug. 2026
  • Seventy million barrels is the strict physical minimum needed at the top of the caverns to keep the extraction pipes safely submerged in oil rather than water, said Siddharth Misra, a petroleum engineering professor at Texas A&M University.
    — Spencer Kimball, CNBC, 15 Aug. 2026
Definition of submerged

Browse Nearby Words

engulf
engulfed
engulfing
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Engulfed.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/engulfed. Accessed 29 Aug. 2026.

Copy Citation
Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

More from Merriam-Webster

Word of the Day

Listen to the pronunciation of kith

See Definitions and Examples »

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

A Who’s Who Regarding ‘Who’s’ and ‘Whose’

'A' or 'an'? What about before 'h'? An Indefinite Article Guide

Why is '-ed' sometimes pronounced at the end of a word?

What's the difference between 'fascism' and 'socialism'?

Commonly Misspelled Words
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

Ye Olde Nincompoop: Old-Fashioned Words for 'Stupid'

14 Phobias You Probably Haven't Heard Of

Even More Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't

The Words of the Week - Aug. 28

Why do we say 'break a leg'?
See More

Popular

See More

A Who’s Who Regarding ‘Who’s’ and ‘Whose’

Ye Olde Nincompoop: Old-Fashioned Words for 'Stupid'

14 Phobias You Probably Haven't Heard Of
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
skateboard-dog-hat
Wordmaxxing Slang Quiz Give your vocabulary a glow up by getting sendy w...
See All