Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The world of the dead in various religious traditions, located below the world of the living.
- noun A region, realm, or dwelling place conceived to be below the surface of the earth.
- noun Archaic The world beneath the heavens; the earth.
- noun The part of society that is engaged in and organized for the purpose of crime and vice.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The world below the skies; this lower world; the sublunary world.
- noun The opposite side of the globe; the antipodes.
- noun The world below this world; the infernal world; the place or state of departed souls; Hades.
- noun The lower, inferior, degraded part of mankind.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The lower of inferior world; the world which is under the heavens; the earth.
- noun The mythological place of departed souls; Hades.
- noun rare The portion of the world which is below the horizon; the opposite side of the world; the antipodes.
- noun rare The inferior part of mankind.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun That part of society that is engaged in
crime orvice . - noun mythology The world of the
dead , located underneath the world of the living; theafterlife .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun (religion) the world of the dead
- noun the criminal class
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Daniel's fall into this underworld is also a flight, for as he falls in love with the mysterious coral thief and she draws him into an audacious plot that will leave him with a future very different from the one he has envisioned for himself, Daniel discovers a radical theory of evolution and mutability that irrevocably changes his conception of the world in which he lives.
The Coral Thief: Summary and book reviews of The Coral Thief by Rebecca Stott. 2009
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We have not sufficiently understood, however, that the underworld is at once a lyrical or metaphysical site and a historical place, even if the ambiguity of its material conditions cannot be isolated from the substance of poetry.
Club Monad 2008
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The Egyptian mythology of judgement in the underworld is all geared around this "weighing" metaphor, though there it's more literal with the soul actually put in the scales.
The Stain of Sin Hal Duncan 2006
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The only reason folks would never mistake him for an agent of the underworld is that striking blue pigmentation.
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Some people will look at it as more realistic than Violets are Blue, but only because they won't be able to believe that the vampire underworld is as large and real as it is.
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Some people will look at it as more realistic than Violets are Blue, but only because they won't be able to believe that the vampire underworld is as large and real as it is.
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The vampire underworld is much larger than most people could imagine.
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The vampire underworld is much larger than most people could imagine.
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No one even at the highest level of either the government or the criminal underworld is immune to this fact.
"All the federales say they could have had him anyday...they only let him slip away" 2009
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The vampire underworld is much larger than most people could imagine.
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