UNDERLIE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.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.

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Etymology of 'Underlie'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Underlie" Quotes from Famous Books

... cannot, indeed, agree that Ethics can be adequately treated by men pledged to ancient traditions, employing antiquated methods, and always tempted to have an eye to the interest of their own creeds and churches. But we can fully agree that ethical principles underlie all the most important problems. Every great religious reform has been stimulated by the conviction that the one essential thing is a change of spirit, not a mere modification of the external law, which has ceased to correspond to genuine beliefs and powerful motives. The commonest ...

— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... and planted on its natural basis, it will direct its own development knowingly along the line of natural law. In all epochs hitherto, society handled the questions of production and distribution, as well as of the increase of population without the knowledge of the laws that underlie them,—hence, unconsciously. In the new social order, equipped with the knowledge of the laws of its own development, society ...

— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... hope of lessening somewhat this natural difficulty of assimilating M. Cumont's contribution to knowledge, and above all, to life, that these brief words of introduction are undertaken. The presentation in outline of the main lines of thought which underlie his conception of the importance of the Oriental religions in universal history may afford the uninitiated reader a background against which the author's depiction of the various cults of the Oriental group will be more easily and ...

— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... of retaliation and necessity, and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these, which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the ...

— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... study of both the attack and the reply leaves me without the inclination to become either a partisan or a peacemaker: not a partisan, for there is a great deal with which I fully agree said on both sides; not a peacemaker, because I think it is highly desirable that the important questions which underlie the discussion, apart from the more personal phases of the dispute, should be thoroughly discussed. And if it were possible to have controversy without bitterness in human affairs, I should be disposed, for the general good, to use ...

— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

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