- appear
- appear 1 Appear, loom, emerge mean to come out into view. In use, however, they are only rarely interchangeable.Appear is weakest in its implication of a definite physical background or a source; consequently it sometimes means merely to become visible or to become apparent (see EVIDENT){
one by one the stars appeared in the sky
}{nothing appears in the testimony to cause doubt of the defendant’s guilt
}Sometimes it means to present oneself in public in a particular capacity or to be presented or given out to the public{Clarence Darrow appeared as counsel for the defendant
}{Booth appeared nightly as Hamlet for the last two weeks of his run
}{the new biography of Lincoln will appear next month
}{weeklies usually appear on Thursday or Friday
}Loom means appearing as through a mist or haze{a smear of . . . lead-colored paint had been laid on to obliterate Henchard’s name, though its letters dimly loomed through like ships in a fog— Hardy
}{between the bed and the ottoman . . . the cot loomed in the shadows— Bennett
}Because things seen in a fog are often magnified by their indistinct outlines, loom, especially when followed in figurative use by large or great or when followed by up, suggests apparent and sometimes appalling magnitude{some mornings it [a mesa] would loom up above the dark river like a blazing volcanic mountain— Cather
}{that which loomed immense to fancy low before my reason lies— Browning
}Emerge definitely implies a coming out into the open from something that envelops: the word therefore presupposes a period or condition of concealment, obscurity, gestation, or insignificance{the sun emerged from the clouds
}{after a long hunt for him, we saw him emerging from the crowd
}{that part of northern Ohio where the Bentley farms lay had begun to emerge from pioneer life— Anderson
}{Lord Sligo emerges from this account as an able and conscientious administrator— Times Lit. Sup.
}Antonyms: disappear: vanish
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
