fathomed

past tense of fathom
as in plumbed
to measure the depth of (as a body of water) typically with a weighted line the pilot had to continually fathom the river, which drought conditions had lowered to unprecedented levels

Synonyms & Similar Words

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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 fathomed The big puzzles of today, including dark matter, dark energy, and the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry, could hardly have been fathomed at the time. Big Think, 28 Oct. 2025 For reasons nobody has ever quite fathomed, people finally became receptive to the concept. Brian Santo, IEEE Spectrum, 7 Nov. 2019
Recent Examples of Synonyms for fathomed
Verb
  • Much as Wes Anderson and Yorgos Lanthimos have plumbed Dafoe’s deliciously wicked sense of humor in pieces that straddle the line between the real and the archly stylized, Solnicki understands that a strong Dafoe performance must always teeter between the two.
    Manuel Betancourt, Variety, 28 Sep. 2025
  • For nearly five decades, NASA's twin Voyager probes have plumbed the cosmos in search of answers to some of astronomy's most perplexing mysteries about our solar system and its place in the wider universe.
    Eric Lagatta, USA Today, 8 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • The video, filmed by someone who must have scaled one of the bridge’s three-hundred-and-ten-foot towers, is basically a eulogy created in the grip of the mind-set that caused the young girls’ deaths.
    Doreen St. Félix, New Yorker, 8 Nov. 2025
  • The royal couple scaled down their engagements to spend time with their three children — Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis — during their school's half-term break, and the family moved into their new home, Forest Lodge in Windsor.
    Stephanie Petit, PEOPLE, 8 Nov. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Fathomed.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/fathomed. Accessed 24 Nov. 2025.

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