Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Same as subterranean.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Subterranean.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective lying beyond what is openly revealed or avowed (especially being kept in the background or deliberately concealed)
  • adjective being or operating under the surface of the earth

Etymologies

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Examples

  • This study cannot progress till the various epochs of simultaneous action, the direction, the extent, and the force of the convulsions are carefully noted; till we have attentively observed their progressive advance to regions which they had not previously reached; and the coincidence between distant volcanic eruptions and those noises which the inhabitants of the Andes very expressively term subterraneous thunders, or roarings.

    Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1851

  • This study cannot progress till the various epochs of simultaneous action, the direction, the extent, and the force of the convulsions are carefully noted; till we have attentively observed their progressive advance to regions which they had not previously reached; and the coincidence between distant volcanic eruptions and those noises which the inhabitants of the Andes very expressively term subterraneous thunders, or roarings.

    Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 1 Alexander von Humboldt 1814

  • After breakfast, we went to see what was called a subterraneous house, about a mile off.

    Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides 2006

  • And this is a purgatory after this life; that is, a subterraneous place and various means, where and whereby the souls of men are purged from all their sins and made meet for heaven, when the Lord Christ thinks meet to send for them, or the pope judges it fit to send them to him.

    The Sermons of John Owen 1616-1683 1968

  • After breakfast, we went to see what was called a subterraneous house, about a mile off.

    Life of Johnson Boswell, James, 1740-1795 1887

  • This is the cause of the difference between those erupted lavas, and our whinstone, toadstone, and the Swedish trap, which may be termed subterraneous lava.

    Theory of the Earth~ Part 3 (historical) 1788

  • After breakfast, we went to see what was called a subterraneous house, about a mile off.

    The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. James Boswell 1767

  • Many philosophers have believed that the central parts of the earth consist of a fluid mass of burning lava, which they have called a subterraneous sun; and have supposed, that it contributes to the production of metals, and to the growth of vegetables.

    The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • Yet at the same time Johnson sympathized with Milton in his blindness, and in his having to watch "his reputation [as author of Paradise Lost] stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence."

    Heroic Milton: Happy Birthday Kermode, Frank 2009

  • A little from the shore, westward, is a kind of subterraneous house.

    Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides 2006

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