UNDERLIE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Underlie

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/ˌəndərlˈaɪ/ Listen

verb

Underlie v. t. (past underlay; past part. underlain; pres. part. underlying)

To lie under; to rest beneath; to be situated under; as, a stratum of clay underlies the surface gravel.

To be at the basis of; to form the foundation of; to support; as, a doctrine underlying a theory.

To be subject or amenable to. (R.) "The knight of Ivanhoe... underlies the challenge of Brian der Bois Guilbert."

Underlie v. i. (past underlay; past part. underlain; pres. part. underlying) To lie below or under.

noun

Underlie n. See Underlay, n., 1.

See images of 'Underlie'

Etymology of 'Underlie'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Underlie" Quotes from Famous Books

... to say something about the intentions and ideas that underlie the three short plays ...

— Three Plays • Padraic Colum

... complete integrity in the whole Del Puente matter, my wonder also grew at so hideous a lapse of judgment. I hopelessly fell back upon such banalities as the errability of mankind, being conscious all the time that some special and most curious infatuation must underlie this particular error. Anitchkoff's card interrupted some such train of thought. He came in quietly as sunshine after fog. His face between the curtains reminded me strangely of the awful moment ...

— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... Man was not comforted by advice of this sort, and was determined to make a kind of war upon the doctrine which seemed to underlie it. He said in effect that if he could not be restored to the pristine condition which he felt to be slipping from him he would as ...

— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... design itself. In making variations depend on changed actions, and these, again, on changed views of life, efforts, and designs, in consequence of changed conditions of life, he in effect makes effort, intention, will, all of which involve design (or at any rate which taken together involve it), underlie progress in organic development. True, he did not know he was a teleologist, but he was none the less a teleologist for this. He was an unconscious teleologist, and as such perhaps more absolutely an upholder of teleology than Paley himself; ...

— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... her eyelids and her underlie half drop, as she looked at him with the simple shyness of one of nature's thoughts in her head at peep on the pastures of the world. The melting blue eyes and the cherry lip made an exceedingly quickening picture. 'Now, I wonder if that is true?' ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

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