engulf

verb

1. (transitive)To overwhelm.

   “Depression engulfed her after her daughter's death.”

   “Shaken by the biggest challenge to their authority in years, Brazil’s leaders made conciliatory gestures on Tuesday to try to defuse the protests engulfing the nation’s cities.”

   “The blank spaces of Mallarmé, the silence of Maesterlinck, the inaniloquous repetitive babblings of Gertrude Stein are the abyss which threatens to engulf creative effort if it continues in this direction.”

2. (transitive)To surround; to cover; to submerge.

   “Only Noah and his family survived when the Flood engulfed the world.”

3. (transitive)To cast into a gulf.