UNDERCURRENT • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Undercurrent

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/ˈəndərkˌərənt/ Listen

noun

Undercurrent n.

A current below the surface of water, sometimes flowing in a contrary direction to that on the surface.

Hence, figuratively, a tendency of feeling, opinion, or the like, in a direction contrary to what is publicly shown; an unseen influence or tendency; as, a strong undercurrent of sentiment in favor of a prisoner. "All the while there was a busy undercurrent in her."

adjective

Undercurrent adj. Running beneath the surface; hidden. (R.) "Undercurrent woe."

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Etymology of 'Undercurrent'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Undercurrent" Quotes from Famous Books

... excellent, according to their mother, but they are terribly brusque and bearish. They are either seen and not heard, or not seen and heard a great deal too much. Even Jane and Meg, who ought to know better, keep up a perpetual undercurrent of chatter and giggle, whatever is going on, with any one who will share it ...

— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... relative value or rank of the two bents of mind there has ever been, and probably forever will be, great difference of opinion. Even in this intensely "practical" age there is an undercurrent of feeling that the narrowly "practical" individual is not the final ideal, and the innermost conviction of many is the same as that of the poet who declares that "a dreamer lives forever, but a thinker dies ...

— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... full of energy, full of the joy of being alive, but there was usually an undercurrent of sadness to all this. While on the road I would feel homesick for New York, and at the same time I would feel that I had no home anywhere, that my mother was dead and I was all ...

— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... injunctions of honor are to be the rule, subject to these exceptions, which transcend the common proprieties when the subject is the rising young gentleman of the period and his goal social success. If an undercurrent of shady morality is traceable in this Chesterfieldian philosophy it must, of course, be explained away by the less perfect moral standard of his period as compared with that of our day. Whether this holds strictly true of men may be open to discussion, but his lordship's ...

— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... trait of character, he shewed in an address to medical students at a distribution of prizes. After congratulating the victors he confessed to "an undercurrent of sympathy for those who have not been successful, for those valiant knights who have been overthrown in their tourney, and have not made their appearance in public." After recounting an early failure ...

— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

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