From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishengulfen‧gulf /ɪnˈɡʌlf/ verb [transitive] 1 FEEL HAPPY/FRIGHTENED/BORED ETCif an unpleasant feeling engulfs you, you feel it very strongly despair so great it threatened to engulf him2 AROUND/ROUNDto completely surround or cover something The building was engulfed in flames.→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
engulf• Isolated houses occasionally disappear, engulfed by the vortex of quarries.• He comes across in large, energetic, engulfing, captivating waves, at once friendly and disturbing.• Her self-criticism of the paternalistic atmosphere which she allowed to engulf her in her early insecurity is devastating.• Fear engulfed him as he approached the microphone.• Global warming will cause the seas to rise, engulfing islands and flooding coastal areas.• These engulfed some older villages, such as Gosforth, which are now smaller shopping centres within the conurbation.• She would willingly have engulfed the baby.• Civil war has completely engulfed the country.• The medium is the message because the message, the culture and ideology of consumerism, has engulfed the medium.threatened to engulf• The realisation left him with a feeling of anguish so great that it threatened to engulf him.• And I lay where I fell, fighting to hold back the tears which threatened to engulf me.engulfed in flames• Coast Guard boats arrived to find the boat engulfed in flames.• The family had tickets for a section of the plane engulfed in flames.• They reached safety seconds before the cafe was engulfed in flames.• And the ambulance was engulfed in flames before firemen caught up with it.• Two of the men were killed instantly, the third was engulfed in flames before he died an agonising death. 