subterraneity

English

Etymology

From Latin subterrāneus +‎ -ity. Compare earlier subterranity.

Noun

subterraneity (countable and uncountable, plural subterraneities)

1. (uncountable, rare) The quality of being subterranean.

   Synonyms: (rare) subterraneanity, (rare) subterraneanness, (rare) subterraneousness

   • [1721, N[athan] Bailey, “SUBTERANEITY”, in An Universal Etymological English Dictionary: […], London: […] E. Bell, J. Darby, […], →OCLC, column 1:

     SUBTERANEITY,^[sic] a being ſubterraneous.]

   • 1861, “The Origin”, in The Progress of Nations or The Principles of National Development in Their Relation to Statesmanship: A Study in Analytical History, London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, →OCLC, page 47:

     The centralisation on which the empire is now firmly erected was the subterranean work which proceeded in the eighteenth century, though nothing appeared above ground but a feudal monarchy. The void in local administration and power which was left when the noblesse migrated to Paris and became a court plutocracy, was filled by the government employés, to whom alone the French peasant looked for any attempt at honest administration. They were the heralds of a centralised empire. The same subterraneity of advance is to be traced in the progress of thought. For instance, the Reformation and the overthrow of Scholasticism was a great and precise epoch, but the preparations for this bursting into life were being conducted while we were within the husk of scholasticism

   • 1893 August 5, Henry James, “To Robert Louis Stevenson”, in Percy Lubbock, editor, The Letters of Henry James, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., Limited […], published 1920, →OCLC, pages 211–212:

     I am really less desiccated than I seem, however, for I am working with patient subterraneity at a trade which it is dishonour enough to practise, without talking about it: a trade supremely dangerous and heroically difficult—that credit at least belongs to it.

   • 1961, American Antiquity: A Quarterly Review of American Archaeology, volume 27, Washington, D.C.: Society for American Archaeology, →ISSN, page 129, column 1:

     The most persistent and distinctive of these features appear to be paired floor vaults, raised firebox, north antechamber, and four masonry roof supports, as well as more general characteristics such as size, a circular shape, a bench, and a determined effort to achieve subterraneity.

   • 2000, Franz Rosenzweig, translated by Barbara E. Galli, “Lessing’s Nathan”, in Cultural Writings of Franz Rosenzweig (Library of Jewish Philosophy), Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, →ISBN, page 110:

     The subterraneity of tolerant thought still in the age of the Reformation.

   • 2023, Lara Langer Cohen, “The ‘Blackness of Darkness’ in Mammoth Cave”, in Going Underground: Race, Space, and the Subterranean in the Nineteenth-Century United States, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 44:

     I began this book by proposing nineteenth-century undergrounds like Mammoth Cave as intertexts for Invisible Man’s underground, which help us understand its potent combination of literal and figurative subterraneity.

2. (countable, rare) Something that is subterranean.

   Synonyms: (obsolete) subterranity, (obsolete) subterrany

   • 1910, Austin Philips, “The Watching Gallery”, in Red Tape, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], page 274:

     Every big post office has one. Some have dozens. St. Martin’s-le-Grand is a warren, Mount Pleasant a veritable honeycomb—a positive castle of Otranto with, in place of subterraneities, a hidden, circling passage upon every floor.

   • a. 1979, Eli Siegel, “The World, Guilt and Self-Conflict”, in Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism, New York, N.Y.: Definition Press, published 1981, →ISBN, page 77:

     The most elusive subterranean pulsation of the unconscious is no less a reality than a humdrum perception of a dull afternoon; but that subterranean bit of the unconscious is no more a reality, either. Let us not make a misty, swift, cavelike terror of the unknown and a meek thing of the known. The known has just as many terrors and subterraneities as the unknown, for the known is not completely known either: all reality is mysterious.

   • 2023, Lara Langer Cohen, “Introduction: A Basement Shut Off and Forgotten during the Nineteenth Century”, in Going Underground: Race, Space, and the Subterranean in the Nineteenth-Century United States, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 17:

     The first four chapters show a burst of interest in the underground in the 1840s and 1850s, when the term’s figurative usage first gained currency. But while the idea of an underground fascinated readers and writers, it had not achieved definitional stability. Rather, the texts I examine proliferate dif­ferent versions of the underground that clustered in proximity to one another, a loose assemblage of disparate subterraneities.