Thesaurus.com
Dictionary.com
Showing results for underlie. Search instead for underl.
Definitions

underlie

[uhn-der-lahy] / ˌʌn dərˈlaɪ /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

The U.S. and China have taken different approaches in the AI models that underlie chatbots such as Claude and ChatGPT.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026

In sum, a hard math problem in the 19th century propelled the conceptual breakthroughs that underlie all the location services on our phones today.

From Slate ● Jun. 22, 2026

“The paintings are about the smoldering tensions that underlie the American dream, so I think it’s a particularly apt moment to bring them back into the public eye.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2026

Talk to some folks in your family whom you trust to make sure you’re not overstepping any unspoken boundaries that underlie family relationships.

From MarketWatch ● Dec. 15, 2025

This fact creates double difficulties for efforts to test the hypothesis that intellectual differences underlie technological differences.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

That underlies the name of a new exhibition at the California Museum in Sacramento, “Help Wanted/Leave Now!” about the “revolving door” of programs and practices that have alternately enticed and expelled workers, legal and undocumented.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026

That consistency was one of the most striking results, adding evidence that dogs and humans share important features of the biology that underlies aging.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 29, 2026

But five days after that, the DOJ notified the court in the Texas case that “the government has decided to maintain the definition” that underlies the ghost gun rule.

From Salon ● Jun. 2, 2026

The new model is going up against OpenAI’s GPT-5, the latest AI which underlies its ChatGPT app.

From Barron's ● Nov. 19, 2025

This is the same sense of ‘modern’ which underlies Butterfield’s title The Origins of Modern Science, and reflects a usage established by the contemporaries of Newton.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

In postproduction, Del Toro sometimes underlay Elordi’s screams with his own guttural noises or the roars of lions and gorillas, imagining a voice created by mismatched lungs and a throat from different people.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 30, 2025

However, Sidony says her flooring was never inspected, and has shown the BBC her end of tenancy agreement which instructed her to remove carpets, underlay, gripper rods and laminate flooring.

From BBC ● Nov. 27, 2024

California created an orchard for the world in large part by tapping into prehistoric aquifers that underlay the Central Valley.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2024

The turf was intended to function as an underlay for a plastic liner atop it as part of a construction project.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 22, 2023

There lay another of those pieces of pink squareness that underlay the structure of the island.

From "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

A fundamental tension has always underlain the history of the Civil Rights movement, much as it did contemporaneous news coverage.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026

Part of the reasoning in 2018 was site investigations found the ground underlain with peat deposits, as well as toxic and phytotoxic - meaning poisonous to plants - risk from shallow soils.

From BBC ● Nov. 15, 2025

Approximately 91 per cent of these forests in the northern hemisphere are underlain by permafrost.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 9, 2023

The drill site in northwest Greenland was 138 miles from the coast and underlain by 4,560 feet of ice.

From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2023

But the adoption of the initiative and the referendum substitutes a new principle for the one which has hitherto underlain American local institutions.

From The Promise of American Life by Herbert David Croly

Instead, clinicians focus on managing the underlying conditions and advise lifestyle modifications, such as weight loss and controlling blood sugar.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 28, 2026

The price is expressed as a percentage of the underlying stock price.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 25, 2026

S. investors, who won’t have direct shareholders rights in the underlying securities held.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026

Maintaining measurements over extended periods helps researchers distinguish temporary variability from persistent changes in the underlying circulation.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 23, 2026

Pure mathematics does indeed deal with certainties, but its applications are only as good as the underlying empirical assumptions, simplifications, and estimations that go into them.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos




Vocabulary lists containing underlie


Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Look it up. Learn it forever.

Remember new words for good with VocabTrainer. Expand your vocabulary effortlessly with personalized learning tools that adapt to your goals.

Take me to Vocabulary.com