underground

Pluralundergrounds (some meanings)

Formsundergrounds, undergrounding, undergrounded

1. 1
   adjective

   Located below the ground or beneath the surface of the Earth.

   The city built an underground parking structure beneath the plaza.

   Engineers traced the underground pipes that carry water to the suburbs.

   Similarsubterranean

   Oppositeaboveground, overground

   Note

   The literal sense, carried over from a Middle English adverb, undergrounde, built from under and ground; Dutch ondergronds and German Untergrund are close cousins. Here the adjective takes no degrees: a sewer is underground or it is not. The figurative uses, such as the outside-the-mainstream meaning, can be more underground. Subterranean is the learned synonym, and hypogean is rarer still.

2. 2
   adverb

   In or into a position below the surface of the ground.

   The cables run underground for several miles before surfacing at the station.

   Rabbits burrow underground to escape predators and the cold.

   Similarbelow

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The regions beneath the earth's surface, both natural ones such as caves and man-made ones such as mines.

   Water seeping through the underground slowly carves out vast caverns.

   Centuries of digging extended the underground into a maze of shafts and tunnels.

   Similarsubsurface, depths

   Oppositesurface

   Note

   The geographer's collective noun for everything below the surface. It treats caves and mine workings as one realm instead of separating what was found from what was dug. Because the same spelling also names the city railway and resistance movements, context does the sorting: talk of seepage, caverns or shafts signals this sense.

4. 4
   adjectivefiguratively

   Hidden, secretive, or carried out in a furtive way to avoid notice.

   An underground campaign spread the banned pamphlets from town to town.

   The journalists relied on an underground contact inside the ministry.

   Similarhidden, secret, concealed, private, veiled

   Oppositeopen, public, overt

5. 5
   adverb

   In a secret manner, without being known to the public or the authorities.

   After the ban, the union continued to meet underground.

   The smugglers moved underground, passing goods through trusted hands only.

   Similarclandestinely

   Oppositeopenly, publicly

6. 6
   nouncountablewith the

   A movement or organization of people who resist accepted political authority or convention.

   Members of the underground passed coded messages between cities.

   The exiled leader had once helped found the underground that toppled the regime.

   Similarresistance

   Note

   Resistance in its organized, wartime shape, almost always with the definite article and often with a nationality: the French underground during World War II. In Casablanca (1942), Ilsa's plea to Victor not to go to "the underground meeting" shows the noun working attributively. Resistance is the nearest synonym. Underground adds the idea of operating in hiding.

7. 7
   adjective

   Associated with activities beyond the mainstream, often conducted unofficially and kept secret from the authorities.

   The city's underground gallery showed work the official museums refused.

   An underground theater troupe staged plays the censors had banned.

   Similarunconventional, alternative

   Oppositemainstream

   Note

   Mostly a word for music and print: underground music, or the unofficial school magazine in Stephen Fry's The Liar (1991). The label carries its own expiry date. Barry Miles, looking back on the 1960s, said the underground "had officially come above ground" and so no longer existed. Alternative and unconventional are milder. Underground still implies something unofficial and kept from the authorities' sight.

8. 8
   nounBritish

   A city railway that runs in tunnels beneath the streets, the British name for what Americans call a subway.

   Londoners rely on the underground to cross the city each day.

   A signal fault on the underground left commuters stranded for an hour.

   Similarsubway

   Note

   British usage. In London it is also a proper name, the London Underground, capitalized when it means that network. Written lowercase, it serves for a city's tunnel railway in general, and underground railway is the fuller form. Americans say subway for the same thing, so the choice of word marks which English the speaker uses more than it describes the railway.

9. 9
   nouncountablewith the

   A group or movement of artists united by resistance to accepted styles and traditions.

   The underground championed films that the major studios would never finance.

   Out of a small poetry underground came a whole new literary style.

   Similarcounterculture, avant-garde

   Oppositemainstream

10. 10
    verbtransitive

    To place electricity distribution cables below the surface rather than on overhead lines.

    The city plans to underground the wiring along the main avenue.

    Engineers chose to underground the feeders to keep them clear of falling branches.

    Similarbury

    Note

    A utility engineer's and planner's verb, made by turning the adverb into an action. It takes lines, networks or utilities as its object, often in the passive (the network to be undergrounded), and the gerund carries much of the load: the feasibility of undergrounding utilities. David Pesonen was urging it for urban regions in 1962. Outside that trade, "run the cables underground" reads more naturally.

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