1610 P. Holland tr. W. Camden Brit. i. 745 Vnder-grownd trees, or which have lien along time buried there.

1673 J. Ray Observ. Journey Low-countries 6 In Friesland..there are great numbers of these under-ground Trees found.

1758 Philos. Trans. 1757 (Royal Soc.) 50 404 A compressed pod of the..Under~ground-Pea.

1803 R. Southey Select. from Lett. (1856) I. 417 Some Jerusalem or under-ground artichokes.

1842 J. C. Loudon Suburban Horticulturist 113 The most injurious of all underground larvæ.

1842 J. C. Loudon Suburban Horticulturist 279 Tubers, or underground stems.

1875 A. W. Bennett & W. T. T. Dyer tr. J. von Sachs Text-bk. Bot. 673 The buds on underground rhizomes.

1833 T. Keightley Fairy Mythol. I. 314 A treasure which the underground-people must redeem at any price.

1866–7 S. Baring-Gould Curious Myths Middle Ages (1872) 216 The underground folk seek union with human beings.

1866 J. Lindley & T. Moore Treasury Bot. I. 40/1 The Under-ground, or Potato Onion..has the singular property of multiplying itself by the formation of young bulbs on the parent root.

1890 E. Watts Mod. Pract. Gardening i. xiii. 68 The underground, or potato onion,..is so called from its habit of increasing at the bulb.

1946 A. J. Holt Wheat Farms of Victoria viii. 129 ‘Underground mutton’ (rabbit) is almost always available for those who like it.

1965 E. Lambert Long White Night xv. 138 I thought a feed of underground mutton would go all right for my tea.

1979 D. R. Stuart Crank Back on Roller 151 Maybe a rabbit, though I was never what y' could call over fond of the ole underground mutton meself.

1611 R. Cotgrave Dict. French & Eng. Tongues Hypogee, a vault, celler, or such like vnder~ground roome.

1664 N. Ingelo Bentivolio & Urania: 2nd Pt. vi. 172 An under-ground Temple consecrated to Melancholy.

1665 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 1 109 The Divine Structure of the under-ground World.

1774 O. Goldsmith Hist. Earth VII. 353 [The Mole-Cricket] at night..ventures from its underground habitation.

1823 P. Nicholson New Pract. Builder 353 If a projected building is to have cellars, or under-ground kitchens.

1846 A. Marsh Father Darcy II. i. 8 One of those long underground passages, used for communication between the different houses.

1878 T. H. Huxley Physiography (ed. 2) 31 After slowly trickling through a long dark underground course.

1675 J. Owen Nature Indwelling Sin (1732) vi. 51 It will increase..until it..makes it self an underground-passage, by some secret Lust that shall give a full Vent unto it.

1822 T. De Quincey Confessions Eng. Opium-eater 48 The stream of London charity flows in a channel..noiseless and underground.

1709 T. Robinson Ess. Nat. Hist. Westmorland & Cumberland Pref. sig. Avj The Inspection of Under-ground Projects of several Kinds.

1795 Earl of Dundonald Treat. Agric. & Chem. 171 The clay..may be wrought by shafting and under-ground mining.

1831 T. Hope Ess. Origin Man II. 73 The earth-worm,..to whom a body dense and rigid..would only impede his underground progress.

1872 J. Yeats Techn. Hist. Commerce 218 The abandonment of ridges will render underground drainage even more necessary.

1827 Q. Rev. 36 89 As soon as the men come to grass they repair to the engine-house, where they generally leave their underground clothes to dry.

1888 F. Hume Madame Midas i. v. 40 They arrayed themselves in underground garments.

1852 Eng. & Foreign Mining Gloss. (new ed.) 60 Overman, an underground overlooker.

1871 Daily News 21 Sept. The underlookers, and the underground manager [of the colliery].

1882 G. F. Jackson Shropshire Word-bk. Reeve, the underground overlooker of the pits.

a1884 E. H. Knight Pract. Dict. Mech. Suppl. 911/1 Stevens's under~ground engine.

1677 R. Gilpin Dæmonol. Sacra ii. vii. 325 This is their help, that some secret under-ground hopes which they espy not, do revive at least sometimes.

1848 J. Keble Serm. Pref. p. xlv There may be an unseen, underground unity.

1886 E. Gurney et al. Phantasms of Living I. 538 We have already had numerous..instances of what may be called ‘underground telepathy’.

1820 J. W. Croker Diary 12 Apr. in L. J. Jennings Croker Papers (1885) I. 172 Brougham..I believe has been for some time in underground communication with Carlton House.

1883 tr. Kravchinsky's Underground Russia 49 The inner life of Underground Russia.

1939 War Illustr. 9 Dec. 392/3 Even in the completely occupied territory there was underground activity.

1939 War Illustr. 28 Oct. 217/1 Underground resistance to Hitler has been organized amongst the workers in all the big industrial centres of Germany.

1944 Times 18 July 2/3 An exhibition of the underground press of Europe.

1950 G. Brenan Face of Spain v. 118 Until recently people suspected of Underground activity had been arrested and court-martialed.

1965 J. A. Michener Source (1966) 784 The night in the Belgian port when another English underground operative had called, ‘One more place in the lorry. Look lively.’

1974 J. White tr. N. Poulantzas Fascism & Dictatorship iv. ii. 186 The KPD's underground apparatus turned out to be non-existent.

1953 Observer 13 Sept. 9/3 Its detached picture of barren tragic love..in a furtive fantastic ‘underground’ sector of London.

1962 Movie Dec. 4/2 Fuller is not an ‘underground’ director whose films actually do the opposite of what they overtly say.

1969 Oz May 36/1 He talked solidly for nearly forty-five minutes—he'd said it all before.. to all the underground papers in the States.

1970 A. Toffler Future Shock xii. 248 The underground movie..is flourishing even more than the underground press.

1977 New Yorker 9 May 126/3 He is attracted to buying Mainline because of its history as a radical underground weekly.

1978 Business Week 13 Mar. 74 Neither the government nor labour unions seem to have any control over the underground economy.

1980 Economic Rev. (Fed. Reserve Bank of Atlanta) Jan.–Feb. 8/2 It suggests increasing activity in the ‘underground economy’ (gambling, bartering, and other unreported income).

1982 Christian Sci. Monitor 1 July b–4/1 Local custom means heavy traffic in illegal drugs and prostitution, an underground economy that is left alone as long as there is no trouble.

1983 Chicago Sun-Times 9 Sept. 38/2 The 30 cents a pound is essentially tax-free, part of the underground (or curbside) economy.

1590 T. Watson Poems (Arb.) 159 That..they may lament with guosts of vnder-ground.

1592 T. Kyd Spanish Trag. i. sig. C2 Come we for this from depth of vnder ground?

a1618 J. Sylvester Iob Triumphant in tr. G. de S. Du Bartas Diuine Weekes & Wks. (1621) 929 Beyond the bounds of Darkness Man hath pry'd, And th' Excellence of vnder-ground descry'd.

1887 Scribner's Mag. 2 449 The open spaces of the underground may..be divided into several distinct classes.

1594 T. Kyd tr. R. Garnier Cornelia ii. i. 377 Those seas..Returne to springs by vnder-grounds.

?1611 G. Chapman tr. Homer Iliads xv. 176 This Jupiter, and I, And Pluto, God of under-grounds.

1884 Daily News 24 Sept. 3/2 The financial success..had not been such as to encourage costly exploration in unknown under~grounds.

1812 J. Sinclair Acct. Syst. Husbandry Scotl. i. 231 A dry, free soil, on a sound under-ground or bottom.

1897 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. III. 10 The underground of houses in certain localities being infiltrated with the virus [of rheumatic fever].

1842 Hist. Berwickshire Naturalists' Club 2 7 Rushes and..marsh thistles filled up the under ground.

1878 M. Oliphant Primrose Path II. 124 The mossy underground beneath the firs.

1946 A. Koestler Thieves in Night 277 The Hebrew underground began as a purely political movement.

1946 W. H. Auden Nones (1952) 61 By night our student Underground At cocktail parties whisper round From ear to ear.

1958 L. M. Uris Exodus i. xii. 72 The Danes, by the middle of 1941, had established a small but determined little underground.

1966 A. Sachs Jail Diary iii. 30 With her husband Dennis on trial for his life for supporting the underground, she was hoping for some peace.

1973 T. Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow i. 96 Captain must allow for the real chance she's a British spy, or member of the Dutch underground.

1959 I. Opie & P. Opie Lore & Lang. Schoolchildren i. 7 It seems that the schoolchild underground also employs trans-world couriers.

1969 Oz Apr. 27/2 The underground's a great crowd really. We enjoy them as people..just being what they are.

1970 Guardian 28 Feb. 9/2 We are going to try..to establish a definition of the underground... The word applies to a life-style, to a group of people who live..outside the constraints of ordinary society..and who largely..have come to the realisation of this new life-style through the use of cannabis and LSD.

1974 M. C. Gerald Pharmacol. i. 13 On the one hand, he has been enticed by ‘notes from the underground’, exalting the wonders of ‘acid’;..simultaneously, he has often been subjected to..the lies and half-truths of the well-meaning establishment.

a1625 W. Shakespeare & J. Fletcher Two Noble Kinsmen (1634) Prol. 18 How will it shake the bones of that good man, And make him cry from under ground . View more context for this quotation

1697 J. Dryden tr. Virgil Georgics iii, in tr. Virgil Wks. 120 Tisiphone, let loose from under ground . View more context for this quotation

1872 Ld. Tennyson Gareth & Lynette 88 Then sprang the happier day from underground.

1632 in S. R. Gardiner Rep. Cases Star Chamber & High Comm. (1886) 104 If he had medled with St. Austin and the Fathers, and not medled so much with these workes underground, he might have knowen the difference betweene the Church of Rome and us.

1679 Animadversions Speeches Five Jesuits 16 Since they may still work under-ground, and not be discovered.

1709 Ld. Shaftesbury Moralists ii. iii. 85 Supplanting and Undermining may be fair War elsewhere: But in Philosophical Disputes, 'tis not allowable to work underground.

1820 W. Hazlitt Lect. Dramatic Lit. 308 [Jeremy Taylor] does not dig his way under~ground, but slides upon ice.

1875 J. H. Newman Let. 29 Oct. The pains and achievements of an editor are emphatically underground and out of sight.

1935 Ann. Reg. 1934 ii. 198 The Socialist leaders..decided that it was best to accept defeat: those leaders who were known made for the frontier, the others ‘went underground’ and began at once the organising of an illegal party.

1949 ‘M. Innes’ Journeying Boy xxiii. 285 There was nothing for it but a quick get-away and a going underground for good.

1960 E. Bowen Time in Rome iv. 118 Like Resistance workers in the occupied countries, long-ago Christians, from time to time, strategically ‘went underground’.

1977 Times 15 June 1/5 The crucial factor was the subsequent move underground by a handful of those people [sc. Soviet sympathizers], and the covers they assumed to mask their new role as agents.