nether
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents |
[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
From Middle English nether, nethere, nithere, from Old English nithera, from niþer, adverb nithor (“down, downward”); akin to Old Saxon adjective nithiri (“nether”), adverb nithar (“down”), Old High German adjective nidari, nidaro (“nether”), adverb nidar (“down”), Old Norse adjective neðri, neðarri (“nether”), adverb niðr (“down”); all from a Germanic word that is a comparative of a word akin to Sanskrit नि (ni, “down”); akin to Old English in.
[edit] Pronunciation
[edit] Adjective
nether (comparative nethermore, superlative nethermost)
- Lower; under.
- The disappointed child’s nether lip quivered.
- Lying beneath, or conceived as lying beneath, the Earth’s surface.
- The nether regions.
- 1873, Mark Twain, The Gilded Age, page187:
- When one thinks of the tremendous forces of the upper and the nether world which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the ripe maturity of womanhood,
[edit] Synonyms
- (lower): bottom, lower
- (beneath the Earth's surface): subsurface, subterranean
[edit] Derived terms
[edit] Translations
lower
beneath the earth's surface
|
|
